Pink Rock Candy – Top fashion trends, news and shopping of 2010

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I can’t lie, Tim Gunn is the only reason I still tune into Project Runway every week, and apparently, he can’t lie either— not that I mind.

After publicly outing everyone’s favorite Vogue-editrix-to-hate, Anna Wintour, about being carried down the stairs after a surely hellish escape from a fashion show, Gunn has decided to get gossipy about Taylor Momsen.

He calls her a diva and pathetic in an interview with E! News because she spent most of her time on her phone instead of looking at the lines she annoyingly couldn’t remember.

As refreshing as the honesty is, I’m a little surprised, not because I can’t believe Wintour would result to being carried down a flight of stairs or that Momsen could, in all her teen-angsty glory, believe her job was less important than whatever is on her phone. I’m shocked because I wasn’t aware Gunn had it in him.

It’s one thing to be brutally honest to reality show contestants about their lackluster designs, but to knowingly place yourself outside the celebrity inner sanctum because the truth is necessary and often more interesting than fiction may prove quite dangerous in the celeb-circles— however, it does make me want to read his new book, Gunn’s Golden Rules: Life’s Little Lessons for Making It Work.

Though reporting on the fashionably elite’s maddening behaviors may strike fear in celebrities whilst in his presence, Gunn is definitely winning the love and allegiance of the masses, not that parenting a catchphrase like “Make it work!” wasn’t worship-worthy to start.

After the fashion week madness, I was left questioning whether livestreaming almost every fashion show was the appropriate route for the fashion industry to take. It seems, Vogue and the CFDA were listening, or at least I feel as if they were— insert fashion remake of the new HP commercials.

As part of Fashion’s Night Out (FNO) this fall, Vogue and SPEC Entertainment will be hosting the largest public fashion show in the history of New York Fashion Week.

On September 7, 2010, Lincoln Center will be hosting approximately 1,500 fashion lovers lucky enough to get their hands on tickets before they sell out. These people will watch about 200 models walk the runway in Vogue-worthy fall trends.

Part of the ticket sale proceeds will go to New York City AIDS Fund.

Since the CFDA and Vogue are in the mood to make groundbreaking changes to the fashion industry— public fashion shows and a fall show during spring/summer fashion week— can we please have a little powwow about the treatment and compensation of interns?

The topic has been on everyone’s mind lately, and if you two major powerhouses say, “jump,” the rest of the industry will ask, “how high?” How about let’s start with compensation for commuting or something, that’s easy, right? Thanks!

p.s. Those stores planning on taking part in the FNO festivities on September 10, can register now. The deadline is June 15, 2010.

The effect of the internet on the fashion industry has been on my mind since I read Donna Karan’s comments during an interview with Valerie Steele, director of the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT).

“We need fashion shows, but that’s industry, it’s not for the general public. All the communication has to stop. It doesn’t go out on the wire, it doesn’t go out on the Internet, it doesn’t get out for the manufacturers to copy the designs. I mean, we’re killing our own industry… There’s too much information going out there. We have to learn the word restriction,” said Karan via Fashionologie.

As a fashion blogger, I can’t honestly recommend a complete internet blackout or blacklist. However, during the last fashion season, I found myself feeling overly inundated with fashion events. Countless designers chose to livestream their fashion shows while photographs of most of the other shows were available for all to see on various websites soon after the shows finished.

“There is no excitement about anything anymore as everything is available immediately and all the time— you don’t have to wait for anything… I think it’s too fast and too fake,” said Isabel Marant in an interview with Grazia UK.

Though the idea of democratizing fashion seems wonderful, fashion is anything but a democracy, and as an industry, it has thrived this way for many years.

Livestreaming Fashion Shows

This season, anyone who was willing, could watch livestreams of fashion shows from design houses big and small. During New York Fashion Week alone, some of the shows whose invites are most sought after, were shown online while happening simultaneously in some hip NYC location.

For lesser known labels or brands who tend to have a mass appeal and price point, making the streaming the fashion shows live online is a wonderful way to garner publicity and potentially reach a new consumer. However, in my opinion, there is a time and a place for incorporating such digital media tactics in a pr plan, and with some brands, the access doesn’t work with it’s mission statement and that inclusiveness shouldn’t be forced simply because everyone else is doing it.

The image of many luxury brands is built on exclusivity. By using such tactics as livestreaming, it seems like a contradiction in values when the fashion show is available to anyone who is willing to watch at the same time as the invited fashion elite.

That being said, I’m not yet part of said fashion elite, and the first time I was able to stream a fashion show online, I was elated.

Post-show Internet Coverage

Though, I’m not yet convinced of the merits of livestreaming for all brands, I do believe on having websites and/or blogs cover a fashion show after the event— this coverage can be from someone who has attended the show or simply seen photos or edited videos used for review/commentary purposes.

Having images of fashion shows online soon after the show occurs does make it possible fast-fashion retailers to copy designs, but being completely exclusionary toward a newer form of media and those consumers who are interested in digitally following the work of their favorite designers and brands could prove detrimental to an industry already struggling because of a weak economy.

Also, for fashion pr, embracing social media aids in the evaluation of fashion show post coverage. Fashion week is something that unites all fashion blogs and simply going through a brands fashion week online press hits will help pr practitioners find new sources interested in their client’s brand while making it easy to evaluate the credibility, based on fashion knowledge and willingness to gain such knowledge, of a blog. Without some access, this post-show coverage wouldn’t be possible.

Like most things, accessibility is a double-edged sword, but will this newfound inclusiveness in fashion be its ruin? Only time will tell, but perhaps fashion, for once, should follow Aristotle’s Golden Mean and live between the extremes. Everything doesn’t always have to be all or nothing.

Talk Back: What are your ideas of including the public while maintaining a sense of exclusivity and prestige within the industry?

Left to right: Gina Garrubbo, Mary Scherpe, Carl Hoyt, Jessica Schroeder, Imram Amed, and Diane Pernet

Ethics…

I had a philosophy class about ethics, once, and my professor was promptly fired for calling another professor a douchebag and telling him to do Oedipal things to his mother. Needless, to say that class was more interesting than helpful. The next couple of years, ethics in terms of Journalism and Public Relations had been beaten into my brain, however the “Navigating Ethics Pane” at the Independent Fashion Bloggers Evolving Influence conference I attended on February 15, left me struggling internally.

“To be a good PR professional, you have to, first, be a good journalist,” is the mantra of my many public relations professors.

“Never, NEVER accept gifts from people or brands you are writing about. A journalist is supposed to remain unbiased,” tout my journalism professors all having either worked at Newsday, The New York Times or both.

“Getting free stuff for writing a blog post is like the barter system,” exclaims a semi-scandalous blogger at the IFB conference. What can only be described as a rant by said blogger, went downhill fast after making slightly anti-Semitic generalizations about the Jewish people (read about it here).

None of this information is helpful in the blogging ethics situation.

Even the discussion had between the panelist of the “Navigating Ethics Panel” at the blogging conference— The New York Times‘ Carl Hoyt (also, a Pultizer Prize winning journalist), What I Wore‘s Jessica Schroeder, BlogHer‘s Gina Garrubbo, The Business of Fashion‘s Imram Amed, A Shaded View of Fashion‘s Diane Pernet, Still in Berlin‘s Mary Scherpe, and jewelery designer/blogger Wendy Brandes as moderator— left things quite unresolved. Continue Reading ‘What Are Blogging Ethics?’