‘Grilling’ The Fashion Experts

You don’t hear the word “grill” and “fashion” in the same sentence nowadays. That’s why I’m happy to bring to your attention once again to Lookonline.com’s Daily Fashion Report, claiming to be one of the very first fashion blogs on the internet.

In her latest post last week, blog author Marilyn Kirschner attended Fashion Group International, a conference overviewing the Spring RTW 2008 collections. Here, panelists are able to grill fashion experts from Vogue to Bloomingdale’s, on what will be the upcoming trends and how they are to deal with the financial crisis.

SD: “How are fashion magazines dealing with the financial crunch?”
SS: “We have been increasingly focused on price even before the market crash. We were in Paris when the stock market collapsed. Our philosophy at Vogue is “Don’t buy less- buy better!” We want designers to bear in mind price but we want them to keep value high. As editors, we have to offer all prices.”

I love discovering thought provoking fashion blogs and Daily Fashion Report is a delightful one. Eventhough Lookonline.com is not the best looking site, their content trumps that of style. Considering that their New York Fashion report is compiled by Marilyn Kirschner and Bernadine Morris (former NY Times journalist), though they are new to me, they’ve been on the fashion scene for over 20 years. Giving both a good sense of credibility when they critique the industry.

It makes sense to me to read this bit on their fashion market reports:

Why pay for market reports when so many of them are offered for free on other sites? Because anyone who attends a show can express an opinion on what they saw, but the mere fact that they attended the show does not make them expert, nor what they report necessarily creditable. It is experience that qualifies someone as an “expert” and the esteem others in the industry hold for that person’s opinion that gives their reports value.

I’ve been studying and reading upon fashion for only a year, so any fashion journalist who has over 20yrs of experience will certainly command authority on the subject. I may not have the credibility to really critique a fashion show in terms of what will sell and what won’t, however I will not let that deter me from asking questions that I feel are important. Cheers to intelligent reporting!

Image credit: Daily Fashion Report