Sorry Vogue, Fashion bloggers are here to stay!
Things got very catty at Milan Fashion Week (MFW). As you may have heard, 4 Vogue.com editors decided to use their editorial recap of MFW to attack the growing presence of bloggers in the industry. Needless to say, their remarks were just as sharp as their Christian Lacroix heels…
“Note to bloggers who change head-to-toe paid-to-wear outfits every hour: please stop. Find another business. You are heralding the death of style,” — Sally Singer, Vogue US creative digital director.
“The professional blogger bit…is horrible, but most of all, pathetic for these girls, when you watch how many times the desperate troll up and down outside shows, in traffic, risking accidents even, in hopes of being snapped.” — Sarah Mower, Vogue.com
“Loving fashion is tremendous…but I have to think that soon people will wise up to how particularly gross the whole practice of paid appearances and borrowed outfits looks.” -Alessandra Codinha, Vogue.com Fashion News Editor
To summarise, Vogue accuses bloggers of cashing out their creativity by becoming walking advertisements for brands. The front row is now, in their eyes, devoid of style and rather akin to “…going to a strip club looking for romance. Sure, it’s all kind of in the same ballpark, but it’s not even close to the real thing.” Ouch!
While the feud is nothing new (see New York Fashion Week SS10), it has reignited ongoing tensions between the older fashion publishing houses and the younger social media sensations; or more specifically the debate regarding digital versus print.
For more than 100 years, Vogue has been at the heart of a small but elite community of designers, publishers and models with an unchallenged power to curate the trends for the masses. In a recent documentary Absolutely Fashion: Inside British Vogue, fashion director of Vogue UK admitted“…we make things relevant and redundant at the same time in a very superficial way.”
However, their sacred bubble is now being disrupted by a wave of 20 and 30-somethings who have built a massive following on their everyday street style and being real people. When Vogue sells aspiration, bloggers tell their audience to ‘just be you’ — and its working.
Chiara Ferragni, the LA-based influencer, has 6.7 million followers (and counting) on Instagram. British blogger, Susie Lau a.k.a Susie Bubble, has almost 300,000 followers on Twitter and Instagram, with invitations to attend 140 shows a season.
While a few may be the daughters and sons of the privileged 1%, many bloggers are average guys and girls with an extraordinary taste for fashion. Paige Calvert, a seaside girl, has racked a significant instagram following through her quirky fashion and lifestyle blog. She agrees that the popularity of influencers like herself is due to the fact that they are, “…real people writing for real people.” Sacre bleu for Vogue who is unable to control their massive popularity and influence on both consumers and brands.
Sure, I am the first to laugh at bloggers who push impractical new season outfits that have been “gifted” to them by fashion houses. (Lady Fur — who told you to wear fur in July!!) However, how is that any different to picking up a glossy mag promoting winter coats when its still 30 degrees outside?
Maybe the true reason for Vogue’s gripe against bloggers is that they are eating into their estimated $460.3 million advertising revenue. There is no denying that publishing revenues have decreased dramatically over the last 5 years. Moving online hasn’t help either with an increasing number of users downloading ad-blocking features. On the other hand, bloggers have an incredible digital presence amongst the most coveted target market — millenials. If bloggers can offer brands a new advertising space with a wider reach but at half the price of a photospread in Vogue, more power to them!
Of course, bloggers aren’t immune to adblocker either. Felix Kjellberg, a.k.a PewDiePie, revealed around 40 percent of his viewers are using Adblock to avoid watching ads on his YouTube videos. Paige Fair made a similar assessment, estimating that Google loses roughly $6.6bn to ad-blocking features. Yet, unlike Vogue, you won’t see a reader ad-block an Insta photo of their favourite influencer.
To be sure, Vogue has been taking on an aggressive digital strategy of native advertising — where paid advertisements are hidden as original content. But…Vogue has been doing that for the years and still struggles to increase its readership amongst the 25–30 age bracket. It won’t be long until Vogue will build paywalls to protect its content. In 2010, Vogue US hired Blue State Digital to create a plan to increase their subscription. However, if the paywall does rise up, Vogue risks pushing out their future readership market who have grown up to expect content for free.
No one would argue that Vogue will remain an iconic fashion publication. However, if it fails to embrace the new wave of entrepreneurial influencers, it will become a relic rather than arbiter of style. As Vogue Spain has illustrated by putting Ferragni on their Spring cover, influencers are instrumental to their continued success.
At See Fashion, we want to give bloggers the platform they need to build their brands and be the ‘walking advertisements’ that Mower, Codhina and Singer hate. We have a pool over 600 designers from some of the best fashion schools including Istituto Marangoni, University of the Creative Arts and London College of Fashion. Turn your style into your very own clothing line! Who knows, Codhina et al will be blogging about your collection next fashion week. If you are interested, we would like to invite you to our exclusive blogger/designer meet up at St Pancras Clock Tower. Join us over wine and cheese to discover how you can create that fashion collection you have always wanted.
Ivana Ojukwu, is COO of See Fashion — the place to discover, pre-order and shape the future of fashion. To attend our blogger/designer meet up event, click here. You can also sign up as a blogger on the See Fashion platform here.
