The Blogazine

Fashion Bloggers: Love Them Or Hate them

We’re in the midst of fashion’s most manic moment: the fashion weeks. Models, celebrities, photographers, editors, buyers and everyone else with an invite, are running from show to show, from front row to front row. And so we have the fashion bloggers, the latest conscripts to the “front row mafia”. Olivier Zahm, editor-in-chief of Purple, made waves on a YouTube video in 2010 by openly expressing his aversion towards fashion bloggers. The same year, world-renowned purveyor of fashion Luisa Via Roma organized Firenze4ever, the first fashion blogger event ever. So whether you hate them or you love them, you have to admit that fashion bloggers have gained traction over the past few years and are an integral part of the industry today. But how have fashion bloggers actually changed the industry, and exactly what is it that made them earn this power? And what does this newly acquired position of fashion bloggers do for the future of fashion business?

The fact that we live in a digital world has most likely helped the rise of the bloggers; they market themselves on a platform where today’s generation is more present than ever. The CEO of Luisa Via Roma said in an interview that “they all speak the same language; they speak the language of fashion and they speak the language of Internet.” Still, there must be a more understandable reason for the almost revolutionary change that has occurred, beside the bloggers’ mere interest in media and fashion. A moment that possibly boosted their status in the industry the most was when Dolce & Gabbana in September 2009 placed four fashion bloggers and street style photographers on the front row together with well recognized and celebrated people of the international press and the fashion industry. It lies in the nature of this industry to be trend sensitive and forward-looking, and perhaps all that was needed was for someone to dare to take the step and open up for something unfamiliar, to make the rest of the industry follow.

There are surely several positive aspects on what the business is experiencing, and the fashion bloggers can possibly function both as a boost for PR as well as “real” workforce for the industry. The question that lies ahead, though, is what the effect will be in the long run, and the topic has indeed been well discussed, written and, yes, even blogged about over and over the last few seasons. If fashion bloggers are the voices of the future, will already acknowledged industry people lose power and have less of a say? Or is it possible to find a balance where the fashion bloggers occupy a sweet spot? With mass digitalization and an ascendant social media trend, we believe that the fashion industry is looking towards an rich, rich future, and that this blogger “phenomenon” is just the tip of the iceberg.