Thanks to the internet, we can theoretically access anything. And thanks to dedicated fashion nuts, the kind who collect old issues of The Face and diligently scan them in, uploading each page to The Fashion Spot, we can indulge our interests to the nth degree. Everyone becomes an expert with ease. In fact, many of today’s highly-regarded fashion bloggers started on now-dormant community-based sites like tFS and Flickr’s wardrobe_remix: Susie Bubble and Sea of Shoes’s Jane Aldridge are two who have come a long way. The leap from bedroom blogger to respected member of the industry is easy now, if you’re photogenic enough, and with a little spare time anyone can join the club.
But that doesn’t mean that there’s no need for real expertise in the internet age. Some people have made the best of what the system can offer. SHOWstudio.com, run by fashion photographer Nick Knight, is pioneering in digital fashion. This September it started broadcasting live panel discussions alongside runway shows during fashion month, and they were talk of the front row at the shows I was at (erm, not seated in the front row), once guests could be bothered to stop Instagramming the runway for the world to see.
When they’re not broadcasting their experiences online, industry insiders like to complain about the recent democratising of fashion – how it’s been opened up by media and fast fashion, and the shift towards high/low cross-overs between high-street and international luxury conglomerates. And the money is shifting, too. Top fashion bloggers have gone from taking photos in their bedrooms to commanding huge salaries. Ecommerce is creeping into every site we visit, to the point where everything you look at feels like a shop window, with an invisible sales assistant waiting for you to hand over your credit card. Even communities have been monetised: the open-source ones popular five years ago have been surpassed by big budget start-ups like Lookbook.nu and Chictopia.
