Bun Fight: Round 2

I PREDICT A RIOT
It's been a while since we saw a bun fight between bloggers and editors, but thanks Vogue it's all kicked off again. 

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Sally Singer, Sarah Mower and Nicole Phelps discuss the presence of bloggers at fashion shows and how it's all a bit 'pathetic'.

However, as a blogger who used to go to fashion shows but doesn't any more, I kinda see things from both sides of the fence.

As one of the first wave of bloggers who got invited to fashion shows, it was really thrilling to begin with. But what I wasn't expecting was the street style photographers. I knew they existed I just didn't realise to what degree. I just wanted to go to the shows, watch the shows, then go home and write a review of the shows. That was it. I didn't want anyone taking my photo or poking at my outfit. For me personally all the other the stuff, beyond the show itself, was just irritating and false. I bailed out because I didn't want to be part the circus. However, Vogue moaning about the "street style mess" is a tad hypocritical, since they have themselves engaged the very same photographers to shoot street style sections in their own magazine and website. Can you say "bandwagon"?

Recently, I was in London during LFW and walked past a venue where big shows must have been happening and, honestly, it was embarrassing. There was a distinct whiff of desperation as people would deliberately strut past street style photographers several times, hoping to get validation by being snapped. But the only harm they were doing was stopping me getting past so I could go to Selfridges!

Rather than vilify the bloggers, Vogue should really look further up the food chain; look to the organ grinder not the monkeys. The fact is, it is brands who engage the bloggers in the first place. 99% of the bloggers there are not going to go and write an in-depth analysis of the show, but that's not why they have been invited. They are there because the brands can access a far larger potential customer base via bloggers and their Instagram accounts than via Vogue. It's a numbers game - nothing more, nothing less. Are show attending bloggers moving fashion forward? No, most of them aren't, however are they actually harming it? I really don't think so. So what, they take up a seat at a show. Big deal. 

BEG, BORROW OR STEAL
It's all the same anyway

Vogue go on to argue that wearing borrowed clothes, which the bloggers are paid to wear, is questionable. Whilst I personally also find that distasteful, it doesn't actually differ to editor's wearing the labels that pay handsomely in advertising revenue. Bloggers get the money in their own hands, editor's get the money for their magazine. I see zero difference. If money has changed hands in exchange for a presence, whether that presence is on a blog, in a photo or in a magazine, it's exactly the same. This is one of the reasons I rarely read blogs or most magazines now - it's all advertising. Plus most blogs are far too 'vanilla' for me. I already know how to wear jeans and a t-shirt or tie a bandanna around my wrist. 

In such articles Ms Bubble is, as always, held up as the representative of all bloggers but actually Susie is very much in the, now tiny, minority of bloggers who do write about fashion in a meaningful and in-depth way. Whilst she is an easy target, as probably the most recognisable blogger on the planet, I don't feel she best represents the point they are trying to make. The other bloggers I can't vouch for as either I don't read their blogs or I've never heard of them, but making an example of Susie is really just lazy journalism.

Fashion shows are just a tiny part of the machinations of the fashion industry. Bloggers don't impact on the industry in any major way, that's still the stronghold of magazines and editors. Beautiful editorials, styled up in challenging and inspiring ways is something bloggers can't ever come close to matching, so why Vogue continue to feel threatened is a mystery.

At the end of the day, if a ridiculously dressed bum on a seat is the worst thing they can think of to moan about then lucky them. They should consider themselves very fortunate indeed.