Fashion journalism graduate and shoe blogger from across the pond, Gemma Cartwright, lent me some great insight. “One thing that’s struck me as interesting since I’ve started editing fashion blogs is the huge obsession many people have with emulating celebrity fashion. It’s not enough any more to have a pair of shoes that look similar to the ones Madonna / Jessica Simpson / Jennifer Aniston wore. They have to be the exact ones. People want authenticity and a slice of the high life, and that comes at a price. Five years ago, people scoffed at the idea of a handbag that cost almost £1000. Now it’s not just footballer’s wives who’re joining the waiting lists at Chloé, Hermes and Louis Vuitton. Since ‘Sex & The City’, even men know who Manolo Blahnik is. He was even the subject of a question on ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’. ‘Sienna Miller boots’ and ‘Jessica Simpson shoes’ are two of the most popular searches we ever get on [my blog] Shoewawa, and I get asked almost daily about the boots / shoes Kate Moss has been wearing. To the mainstream market, those three are probably most influential style icons in the world at the moment. People are constantly adding the words ‘boho (bohemian style) Sienna’ to their eBay listings in order to get more hits.” Could it be that fashion has become so important in the eyes of women worldwide that they will pay anything for “the best” and get addicted to the hunt of “hot” designs they see and take to? There is a habit forming here among “fashionistas.” To start, it doesn’t take much for a style to become must-have, and then the crazed pursuit begins, whether that includes saving or blowing all savings, arduously tracking down deals or impulse buying. It’s big, but isn’t always economically helpful; in fact it can be a big problem, and not just for the broke.

Some are turning to the Internet’s bargain bins, such as eBay.com, for designer steals, and sometimes rip-offs, when they encounter realistic replica handbags selling as the real thing. The desire is so strong, unsuspecting shoppers often don’t put in effort to educate themselves on the matters of fraudulent handbags, and the details of the true designs. The Internet has caused a “Buy It Now” mentality, and fashion is affected. EBay has recently recognized this growing issue, and is allowing users to submit “buying guides,” which are purposefully in part an outlet for experts to describe marks of authenticity and point out counterfeiters’ own tendencies. Such experts have popped up quickly, who specialize fanatically on one designer. This care to analyze the details proves every angle of the obsessive cycle.

So, is this just a mindless, frenzied craze, alone? Julie Fredrickson, of the style-meets-intellect blog, “Almost Girl,” thinks there needs to be further improvement in terms of fashion legitimacy, “I only hope that we see fashion as a subject taken more seriously in the future.” Julie does her part to bring intellectual discussion to the fans of fashion as they commune online. Her blog rose to the top of the fashion circle’s list, with the help of her original idea for a team effort of “Black Friday Blogging.” Surprisingly, Frederickson’s goal was far from capitalizing on the commercialism of the biggest shopping day of the year. She chose to focus on insight and analyzation, over advertising products and scooping out the best deals (and, unusually, there is not an ad to be seen on her blog’s pages) . The movement even got others to play along in the same tune. “Almost Girl” did gain a lot of publicity for the event, but you won’t hear Julie brag.

It’s true that fashion is an art, when designed with the right mind set, and taken out of context with figures of sales, but it is not seen that way, by and large. Now, we’re either in the midst of a good start toward affirmation, or the high before burnout. I think that fashion will continue to diversify, and by doing so, both legitimize and over-saturate itself. Just like replica handbags attempting to be sold as designer, the lines of fashion could be blurred as such that the next issue could be a fight between different sides of fashion and its media. After all, in America, overdoing it is the new black.

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by Designer Ella on January 1, 2006

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