Final Project Magazine

The
Situation
With
Street
Style
By Guy Trebay
How many light years ago was
it that we first saw clusters of
fashion week photographers
kneeling to photograph
somebody’s shoe? That time
now seems distant and quaint.
As the editors of Vogue noted
in a barbed round-table
posting about Milan Fashion
Week, greeted by both
cheers and derision (mostly
derision), the street-side catwalk
is now largely a means
of hyping styles, trends and
merchandise already in
circulation, with scarcely
any relation to fresh ideas.
Calling the quick-change
artists and freebie-hustlers
of the collections sideshow
“pathetic,” “embarrassing”
and “sad,” the Vogue editors
bemoaned the practice of
Instagram-baiting as a herald
of the death of real style.
The bloggers shot back with
their own critique of an industry
that benefits richly
from cozy relationships
with designers and labels.
“Bloggers who wear paidfor
outfits or borrowed
clothes are merely doing the
more overt equivalent” of
the editorial credit system,”
Bloggers, too, she added,
have bills to pay. Ultimately
it was a fake firestorm lit
by careless terminology. The
creatures that the Vogue
team was talking about are
not bloggers — they do not
create original content, written
or visual — but rather
poseurs. Whatever side you
came down on, however,
this new reality underscores
one difficulty faced by those
who attend the monthlong
round of fashion shows held
twice yearly in New York,
London, Milan and Paris.