Too legit to quit: Why fashion blogging cannot die

Christmas came early for fashion bloggers last year. Their Scrooge-ly present from New York Fashion Week organizer IMG: no more bloggers at fashion week to keep it from being a “sideshow.” I can only imagine what fashion bloggers must’ve felt, or have been feeling since 2010, when predictions of their slow, uneventful spiral into oblivion first started to circulate. Was the NYFW mandate truly the last nail in the coffin?

I can’t say I blame IMG. Fashion Week in the Philippines is a circus as well, full of peacocks and vultures taking selfies in their outfits (which are fashionable on what planet?) instead of paying attention to the clothes on the runway. Cutting down the media invites by at least 20 percent (like IMG is planning on doing, according to The Wall Street Journal) would indeed benefit those who attend the shows and mean business, that is, The Legit.
And there’s that word again, “legit.” Fashion bloggers have long been scoffed at and criticized by journalists for being amateurs, for not having paid their dues, for having it so easy, or for just breathing the same precious press conference oxygen. It’s a valid sentiment, too. In the traditional sense, to be “legit” is to have studied and risen up the ranks, to have done your share of pullouts, late night closing and early morning coffee runs for people other than yourself, to have spent an entire day just making an inventory of nail polish at the office, to have been bashed on the forehead by a photographer’s camera because you wanted to get closer to the stage for the story. But we no longer live in a traditional world, do we? There is now a fine line between “legit” and “lucky,” and that’s the sliver of a space between their seats at fashion week.

On the other hand, the anointed fashion bloggers — that handful that actually get front row seats at Fashion Week, haven’t exactly gotten by with just pure luck. And though bloggers have always been top-of-mind dispensable, a lot of them are either on the payrolls of designers themselves, or already working alongside them.

OscarPRGirl, for example, has long been on Oscar de la Renta’s payroll. Leandra Medine of Man Repeller has been pretty transparent about working with brands (“I am probably more monetizable than the actual site,” she’s reportedly told Business of Fashion). Bryanboy is a judge on America’s Next Top Model and is under CAA, which also represents Tom Cruise and Kanye West. Former Vogue assistant Emily Weiss of Into the Gloss starred in Derek Lam’s 10 Crosby lookbook and has had a Sephora campaign. Style Bubble’s Susie Lau has worked with Gap, Urban Outfitters, and H&M, and also writes for Elle UK and Dazed Digital. Aimee Song of Song of Style has worked with Italian high-fashion boutique Luisa Via Roma and has starred in Botkier’s spring advertising campaign. And let’s not forget 17-year-old wünderkind Tavi Gevinson, who raised eyebrows for being seated next to Anna Wintour at age 13, and is now the editor in chief of Rookie magazine and recently starred in Cole Haan’s 2013 holiday campaign. Pretty good deals for a “dying breed.”

Truthfully, when I look at this rundown of accomplished bloggers, I find them more inspiring than the zoo animals they are made out to be. And they seem to be a hardworking bunch. I get it — IMG was referring to the crowd of onlookers hanging out at the so-called cheap seats or desperately begging to be let in by the doorman. But even the best of them must’ve started somewhere — that is, nowhere near front row. Bloggers are to fashion what bandaids are to rock music. They are the fans. To paraphrase Still Water’s incendiary guitarist Russel Hammond, they know the designers, they know the trends, and they know the clothes. Even the bad ones. Especially the bad ones.

In the same way that musicians would want their audience to turn off their recording devices and just enjoy the moment (and be less of an inconvenience to people around them), perhaps Fashion Week organizers merely wish for a mere behavior adjustment from the rather overzealous sector. But without them snapping photos of almost everything they see on the runway and the juicier stuff lie on the sidelines, reporting would be truly one-sided. You have to agree, no journalist wants that.

For years now, everyone and their mother have prophesied that fashion blogging is dead. But its feline quality of springing back to life continues to prove everyone and their mother wrong. The novelty of blogging may have waned, but every hit and comment that an obscure blog gets is a pulse. It has proven to be more than a venue for self-expression for outcasts with a misunderstood sense of style — it has delivered raw talent for the professionals, the experts, the “legit” to harness. Fashion Week may be overpopulated, but the world? It’s a damn huge place.

I’m pretty sure there are a lot of fashionable unknowns out there, more Tavis yet to be discovered. We need variety — a balance of good and bad, of photobloggers and fashion writers, of both raw and ripe talent. Let’s not forget, Tavi started out as a teen blogger who looked like a miniature grandmother with her hair dyed gray and layered outfits. Now she’s a total babe with a more polished style apparently worthy of an ad campaign.

Stylight.com, which conducts the annual Fashion Blogger Awards, has singled out the best fashion bloggers for 2014 — a list that includes Negin Mirsalehi (Most Promising Fashion Blog), Aida Domenech (Best Style Fashion Blog), Louise Ebel (Most Creative Fashion Blog), and Kenza Zouiten (Most Influential Fashion Blog). If there is anything these fashion blogs have in common, it’s quality — fashion blogging 2.0. Photos are well-styled and posts are not limited to outfits but instead, give readers a peak into the blogger’s lifestyle. They are the perfect template for today’s voyeuristic society.

Izzy Tuason, the blogger behind The Dandy Project, however, believes that the template is constantly changing: “I know for sure that at least in five years, the way we blog then will not be the way we blog today. Honestly, people don’t really sit down and look at blogs anymore. Media is so digestible nowadays. I call our generation the ‘Buzzfeed generation.’ In some ways I’ve been tailoring my blog posts to look like Buzzfeed posts: one short headline, huge picture, text and if you don’t want to read it suit yourself, but you’ll still understand the story I’m trying to tell.” More than separating the good bloggers from the bad, he feels it would be better if the experienced bloggers just helped the newer ones. “I owe a lot of my blogging career to Steve Salter of Style Salvage, so I’d like to see a mothership organization by bloggers that will take in younger bloggers and show them how its done, one more inclined to helping people. I think that would suit the nature of blogging more than some overarching union,” he says.

It wouldn’t hurt to have more fashion bloggers. The good ones we’ll eventually meet on the streets and will likely show up on television or in magazines — or at Fashion Week. The bad ones, well, they’ll be neatly tucked away in the parallel reality that is the Internet, filed under #fashionbloggingisdead, incapable of annoying anyone with their consent. Additional interviews by CAI SUBIJANO