First Vogue called out bloggers for heralding the death of style. Then, Neiman Marcus piled on, blaming bloggers for changing customer expectations and creating fatigue — before clothes even hit shelves.
Other brands, however, are adapting how they work with influencers.
Proenza Schouler and Tanya Taylor, for example, both only give bloggers clothing that is available in stores, not from collections that haven’t been shipped. And a new study of 1,000 customers by Pysche this week found that 82 percent of people think fashion blogs are going to become more influential than fashion magazines in the future. A third (35 percent) of people said they read blogs over magazines because it felt more “accessible.”
The blogger-brand-media relationship is evolving. Glossy convened a group of fashion bloggers to share their thoughts on this controversy.
Nataliya Ogle (@styletomes of the NYC Style Collective)
“Blaming bloggers for a changing fashion week atmosphere is simply a temper tantrum as the industry continues to evolve to keep up with the fast-paced information age. At the end of the day, the mass market doesn’t sit down and determine what to buy based on a fashion editor’s reviews. They choose what to buy based on what popular girls are wearing and based on how many times they see it, in editorials and street style photos.”
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Liz Avenue (@lizavenue, lizavenue.com)
“It’s 2016, we should be embracing this unconventional way of engaging the community which was born out of Vogue’s influence and the innovation of social media in the digital age. Let’s not let the ‘cool kid in high school’ pick on the ‘eccentric’ kid just because they are different.”
Cindy Wang (whenindoubtblog.com)
“As much as I respect the publication as an institution, these editors’ opinions are simply hypocritical and antiquated. They condemn bloggers for trotting up and down the streets in borrowed or paid-to-wear outfits, but isn’t that the very same practice carried out by editorial photo shoots, showcasing gifted merchandise from designers? They also depict bloggers as pathetic and self absorbed. Quite frankly, we’re just better at leveraging our personal brand and platform than a mammoth magazine could. Some of today’s bloggers are more valuable to brands than a beautifully staged editorial photo simply because we are more relatable to the end consumers.”
