THOUGHTS | The Internet’s Effect on Fashion

While internet offers uncountable options, fashion is experiencing a uniformity of taste.

Internet has liberated fashion in a way that fashion cannot even liberate itself. This very moment is the time when fashion bloggers are applauded for their style mastery, when #ootd (stands for outfit of the day) hashtag will guarantee more likes than book-related photos in Instagram and when fashion week has gradually lost its relevance. Take an example from how easy it is for people to tune in style.com and other websites to see the latest collection looks and even live-stream the runway shows.

If we are to list internet influences on liberating fashion, a logical path we are supposed to find is a more diverse fashion scene, where people get a platform to express their individualities and brands are able to engage the consumers personally. And at a glimpse, that is indeed what happens. Most notably marked with the birth of fashion bloggers and online shopping behavior, fashion appears to let go of its exclusivity factor and comes out as a royalty ready to mingle. (disclosure: as a matter of fact, as I’m writing this piece, I cannot keep my fingers from changing tabs to several blogs) Internet has become such a warmhearted playground for those whose wardrobe is too outrageous or those who want to channel their “creativity” outside the real life. The world wide web with its gargantuan space thus welcomes innumerable takes on fashion.

But, really, is that what happens?

Yes, bloggers get the chance to show off their individual style, but are their styles any different? Counting how many similar products the bloggers have can tell you better. Yes, we all can upload our “outfit of the day,” but are our outfits strikingly different? Your Instagram filter can perhaps illustrate better. This so-called democracy of fashion, it turns out, brings an anonymity and uniformity of taste.

What I’d like to address with "boringness" in fashion and style accounts to our unhappiness to the innumerable choices. Or at least, that is what the internet entities think we feel. Thus every day we are offered chances to “curate” what we see through who we’re following on social media channels, which websites we are subscribed to, and even we can handpick whose feeds we will be presented with upon signing in to Facebook. With these whole additional and more diverse options, people start to filter and choose who they want to be exposed with. And by the end of the day, once you read or view the same thing on a regular basis, you become that thing.

After all, maybe uniformity in fashion isn’t entirely dangerous so the designers can predict better what each customer likes. And to us? The uniformity can bring in more likes for our #ootd posts because we can easily predict what kind of photo the majority likes. Henceforth, I’d like to welcome you to the future of online fashion. The future that believes in “minimalism” and “nineties” as evident on the latest runway of a lot of major fashion houses, the future that encourages commercialism but forgets to celebrate diversity. The future that casts out your individual style statement. The future you may not belong to.

image is from tumblr

HER FLAIR | Franca Sozzani

Outspoken editor-in-chief is a rare breed these days.

The last time I clicked on "New Post", I was impulsive. It was late night and I was wondering why I cannot get over how bland the fashion week is. The only interesting bite is the street style capture, but it isn't that captivating either. Even after viewing Ghesquiere debut in Louis Vuitton, I still could not shake the feeling of blandness. But that, I suppose, would be another post. 

Lamenting over the death of fashion industry would be a long talk. 

A refreshing point of view I found came from the editor-in-chief of Vogue Italia, none other than the witty, clever, all-womanly Franca Sozzani, who does not only have an impeccable style and direction but also has an impeccable way of thinking. She runs a routine editor column in the magazine's website www.vogue.it and pens her thoughts every day. I mean, how many editors are doing what she is doing these days? On March 7, she posted this and I could not agree more. It is her post-fashion-week thought, how to digest every bits she has witnessed on the runway and what we are supposed to do with it.

"After over a month of runway shows, presentations, fashion events, within a primarily ‘fashionista’ world, the time has come to think about all we have seen, about the inputs we have received.

This is the best time because I still haven’t decided what to do for the magazine, how to outline the next issue, and like the French say, I have time to 'prendre du recul', to get a 'global' but more ‘complete’ perspective, with some more detachment.

You also realize that things you had instinctively liked very much, with a little more aloofness now seem a little ‘overdone’ and less original. You feel as if you were re-assembling a jigsaw and now each piece in in the right place.

This is the moment you realize that you don’t care what people think and what you read in the press, but with a clearer mind you shape your own opinion on the collections showcased.

My idea is that people do not care for a too-studied fashion, that is flawless from a shared aesthetic point of view, and maybe flawed from another, less trendy, perspective."

A little overdone and less original, true that those collections somehow fall into the trap of mediocrity. But Sozzani really put it eloquently: that this is the moment we would not care what people think and what we read in the press.

Read the full post of her thought here. Photo is from here.