Last year I had mentioned a really good article published on IFB concerning fashion bloggers and their finances. As I look through the tweets and photos and having just last week attended Montreal Fashion Week, my mind is still boggling with wonder. How do these women afford these expensive clothes? Besides the stylists, models, and close friends, fashion fiends who prance around in $2000 outfits each day, simply, again, boggles my mind. Especially those who claim they are of the fashion blogging brigade.

And for a brief moment, I felt like I had to step up my game and also dress up for the crowds, a sea of people I don’t know, in the hopes that I would get photographed and have the self-gratifying knowledge that I was deemed fashionable. It’s actually kind of silly when you think about it. But I have to admit, it’s so easy to get swept up in the illusion of glamour and 5 second celebrity of being liked by strangers. And who wouldn’t want to look good in an expensive outfit and have thousands of eyeballs seeing you on a high trafficked website?

Yet, I personally can’t afford those $2000 Louboutin knee high boots, which even disgraced actress Lindsay Lohan, got to wear in a photoshoot, but a mere blogger such as myself simply can’t afford, and refuses to buy a knockoff version. What’s a girl to do? By next season, they’re gone already.

And, I don’t know if I’m jealous of other bloggers who get most of their wardrobe for free, such an example is Tavi Gevinson, the 14 yr old wonder who owns Rodarte tights and Proenza Schouler shirts. What was I wearing when I was 14? Tommy Hilfiger t-shirts made in China, that’s what. At the L2 Generation Next forum last year (shown above), she disclosed her outfit brands and mentioned American Apparel socks (which they didn’t send them to her to wear for that specific event, but did send them to her for free). Not to disrespect Ms. Gevinson, she’s a well-spoken 14 yr old with great talent for insight for her generation’s way of thinking, but I can’t help it but feel a bit disgusted at the free expensive clothes she gets. To emulate the fashion blogging stars of today, many fashion bloggers join the fold and hope to get to such status: getting free clothes, be featured in fashion magazines, rub up with fashion editors, sit front row at the fashion shows, and heck, even design a capsule line with H&M.

It’s no longer about appreciating the clothes, it’s just to have them, show ‘em off on the blog and at the shows, and then discard them into the back of the closet or the drooling vultures waiting to buy it off you. Because you can’t be seen with the same old thing from last season when you have a new crop of spanking brand new clothes to wear for the new season. It seemed only yesterday fashionistas were spewing talk of “investment pieces” when it’s really code for a shelf life of one season.I really doubt you’ll be seeing that Givenchy leopard print outfit from 2010 any time soon.

Fashion blogging that focuses on criticism such as Dualité is probably not at the top of most people’s list of things to look for when searching for clothes. Fashion brands dislike negative press, yet I don’t understand why they would get so offended. When reviewing a product, whether it’s a computer, a toothbrush, shampoo or clothes, you’re bound to have some negative criticism. That’s why I find criticism of the electronics industry to be so wonderfully open to audience reviews, and it drives them to do something about their shortcomings (such as Apple’s flack on the iPhone 4′s reception). Why can’t fashion brands get “flack” on badly designed collections once in a while? After all, all collections are based on a team of collaborators (seamstresses, suppliers, bag makers, shoe makers, etc) of whom the designer seems to be taking all the credit for. Why does the fashion industry have to go so far as to BAN journalists from attending because of one flack review? Why must they be so sensitive about criticism? What does it say of a brand who can’t stand up to criticism and prove people wrong the next time around? Where’s the will to fight back?

Image credit: Scott Schuman, The Sartorialist

Anyway, I felt that as I watch NYFW unfold, as great as everyone looks in those street style photos, something rings false in the end. It’s not really street style when you’re going to a place to be seen and snapped. That’s what I really liked about The Sartorialist, he goes out and photographs when it’s NOT an event, where the fashion crowd isn’t normally found. That is true street style – unpretentious and unplanned.

No one could really tell or advise you how to handle Fashion’s Night Out in New York, especially since this was only the second year and radically different from last year’s inaugural celebration.

The event certainly dwarfed any of the fashion events I attended, including the Fashion & Design Festival in Montreal. Practically the entire city of New York, visitors and residence alike were decked out in their most fashionable outfits, high heels galore and people crowding the streets to attend more than 100 locations around the city.

My first stop was to go to Jil Sander’s new bridge line “Jil Sander Navy” with special guest appearance by French illustrator Garance Doré, who had shot the campaigns for the line. The Navy line will replace the one from Uniqlo in order to cater to middle class consumers. The collection mainly consisted of near pure CMYK intensity of Magenta, Cyan, White, and Bright Orange. This season’s collection was more sporty with a few shift dresses, and sports jackets with adjustable ties. Some of the white shorts had some interesting textures, thus not your typical run of the mill pieces, it was a nice breezy collection for spring. I loved the store layout at Jil Sander, with pure white walls and floors, and featureless white mannequins, they really made the clothes pop out.

When Garance finally arrived, with her fellow fashion beau – Scott Schuman, she was totally glammed up and was much more beautiful in person than I had anticipated. I was actually expecting that cool laid back French look, but was greeted with a more sleeked back look and stunning red lips. She’s friendly, girly and still is overwhelmed by the attention she gets for her work, so I find her to be very humble. When I asked her about how she approached the shoot for the campaign, she said that because she’s a newcomer to New York (having moved there recently), she was afraid of losing that sense of “lost in the city” approach and wanted to reflect that in her photos. No doubt her photos had a Sartorialist feel to them, the difference being she would catch people in a moment rather than have them pose for the photo.

Scott Schuman was another blogger I had anticipated in meeting, but his aura exhuded professionalism, and I was a little star struck, so I didn’t quite know what to ask him. So I asked something related to Garance, like how she got into photography and he said that he gave her her first camera. That was really sweet! He discussed the busy schedule they had ahead of them and expressed their interest to travel to smaller fashion weeks in other countries, since the bigger ones are sort of a “been there done that”. I found this to be kind of particular since it seems that when you’re a nobody, you want to be the superstar, but when you’re the superstar, you want to go back to being low key. Isn’t it strange?

Overall, I was glad to meet them, but at the same time they had other people to talk to, it wasn’t quite full at Jil Sander, but it was enough to make Garance feel like she did reach out to a few at least. Good for her.

While at Jil Sander I had chatted up with Jason, a fan of Jil Sander and Garance’s work. We had a good friendly chemistry for strangers and ended up hanging out together for the rest of the evening. It was one of those serendipitous New York moments, where a stranger can make you pass the time so much faster. I followed him to Ralph Lauren, where it was the total opposite of Jil Sander, packed halfway into the open street. Vogue’s Editor at Large, Andre Leon Talley made an appearance to introduce Grammy-nominated singer, Janelle Monae (a singer I’ve never heard of). Her opening song, “Sincerely Jane” blew me away. She was referenced by Andre as the “Marlene Dietrich” of our time, with a fitted tuxedo look, a look she said she paid tribute to her parents, people who put on a uniform for a living. Her performance though brief, was electrifying and her dance moves had the crowd going wild.

The party at Chanel in Soho was blocking traffic nearly in all directions, it was virtually impossible to go in. At Reiss, supermodel Coco Rocha posed in front of an English red telephone booth they installed inside the store (Rimmel London was a co-sponsor of the event).

By 10pm I was exhausted. I had been up since 4:30am that day and had been pretty much on the go non-stop. Being in New York gives you tons of energy but at the same time drains you twice as much.

Hollywood has made a biopic of Facebook creator, or so he claims, Mark Zuckerberg, called “The Social Network“. Perhaps not a person of interest for fashion enthusiasts, however…

What IS interesting though is casting into an already bright limelight, a young entrepreneur, a computer engineer as its star. Not exactly your typical run of the mill Hollywood star, Zuckerberg definitely would not make it on the cover of Vogue, but he will make it onto the cover of the New York Times.

I wonder, could Hollywood be the last frontier for fashion bloggers?

Amidst the print, tv and web media, there’s only one place left for fashion bloggers to conquer in the media world: film. It’s a natural progression really. Over the years, the fashion industry has grown accustomed in watching documentary films and bio pics about fashion houses and its designers, but we have yet to see a full blown, glamorous bio pic of a relatively young social media star, plucked out of nowhere, and cultivating a cult following online. True, fashion bloggers have not yet graced the covers of fashion magazines or any other magazine for that matter, but it’s only a matter of time until someone bedazzles the entire online world to the point that big media will have to feature them to sell copies. Could it be possible that having a bio pic made is the ultimate validation of the success of a fashion blogger? I’m scared to think of the possibilities.

What’s particular about The Social Network movie trailer is that it takes an intimate look at Facebook’s creator. The trials and error of a start up company and the painful consequences to success. What fashion bloggers have maintained quite well is their privacy. Sure, they share with everyone what they had for lunch and if they had gum stuck on their shoe, yet there is still a barrier that has not been crossed. Gossip of private relationships of fashion bloggers are rarely discussed, and the budding fashion media companies bought out by bigger corporations are often simply viewed as a routine business transaction. Fashion editors of these sites come and go, often we don’t really know of the politics or agendas behind these moves. Is it worth looking into? It could be interesting.

I would love to see someone creating a documentary about fashion bloggers and showing the public the metrics of how they came to be, what they’re about, and how it has changed the relationship between fashion and media today. No doubt the stars of today’s fashion blogosphere will include Scott Schuman, Garance Doré, Bryan Boy, Susie Bubble, Tommy Ton and Tavi, their legacy has already been written down as the first generation of fashion blogging stars who have broken the barrier to be invited to the front rows of fashion and couture shows as bloggers.

If “The Social Network” proves to be a success, Hollywood probably won’t be trailing to0 far behind for fashion bloggers. It’s only a matter of time until the fashion world discovers their diamond in the rough, a genius that will surely clench a permanent spot for fashion bloggers as a valid media portal into the fashion world.

Thanks to Twitter, Facebook and the numerous blogging engines on the web, fashion bloggers who have applied to Montreal Fashion Week have gone up to 15% of the media being accredited, according to Sensation Mode’s PR rep Sophie des Marais to La Presse. One accredited blogger wasn’t really a blogger, but a Facebook girl with over 1200 friends who loved fashion. This follows hot on the heels of internet sensation Scott Schuman, Bryan Boy, Tommy Ton, and Garance Doré who have had front row seats (and laptops) at the recent Dolce & Gabbana show in Milan.

This past Spring Summer 2010 fashion “month” has seen some of the most remarkable change of attitude towards fashion bloggers and the relationship between fashion and technology as a whole. A handful of shows have streamed their fashion shows live online, most notably Alexander McQueen and Louis Vuitton, as well as the timely release of LuxuryLab’s Digital IQ list of the most technologically competent luxury brands. Fashion 2.0 has never been such a hot commodity than now.

But, fashion bloggers are still languishing below top journalists and fashion editors at reputable publications in terms of recognition, according to UQAM’s Chairman of Public Relations and Communications, Bernard Motulsky. But the fact that fashion bloggers are making their own space at Montreal Fashion Week and to get recognition for it, is a step forward.

As we move further into the online fashion revolution, we can only expect more online innovations and initiatives.Style Coalition, for example is already one of the first to curate events that involve fashion and new media.SHOWStudio collaborates with some major designer brands and fashion forward artists by melding together fashion, art and technology with video, music and projections. It’s only with time will we see who will emerge as the leading voices of the new fashion media frontier.

Image credits: Kurt Geiger, Bryan Boy, Garance Doré

The photos focus mostly on the details, or taken in a way that your eyes are zooming on the glaring obvious item that’s making the entire outfit pop out. You might be familiar with the photo of the fake Chanel paper bag, or a photo of another fashion photographer strolling the street, that’s Tommy Ton, and I believe he’s a rising star.

Reading up on Tommy Ton, it’s to my own surprise that yet another Canadian fashion star is born. Having started his blog only last year in Sept 2008, after being online for only 3 months, China’s luxury retail giant Lane Crawford had contacted him to shoot their 2009 campaign, according to the Toronto Star. I mean, the guy is still living with his parents and busing his way like any normal Canadian citizen to New York for street photos.

It’s also great to know that just a couple of days ago, another fellow Canadian, Rad Hourani had shown his new bridge collection called Rad by Rad Hourani in New York’s Soho Grand Hotel. You can find the photos of his collection shot by Tommy on JakandJil.com. He’s now on the run making shoots for another Montreal-based company, Complexe Geometries (who by the way are gaining quite a lot of exposure, seen them in Clear Magazine as well), and recently gushed about seeing Balenciaga’s Nicholas Ghesquiere in his hotel lobby on Twitter.

I must admit that it’s been difficult to blog about Canadians in the fashion industry, but it’s so refreshing to see new talent gaining the attention they deserve. Not only are they discovered, but discovered ONLINE. I mean Lane Crawford is huge in China, how did they get the memo about Tommy Ton? I’m totally perplexed. By the way, Lane Crawford’s current success is owed to former CEO, Bonnie Brooks who is now CEO of The Bay, so expect The Bay to change in the near future.

The fashion industry definitely has its eyes set to conquer the online world.

Image credits to Tommy Ton

Sadly, Montreal’s fashion industry seems to be stuck in a digital rut, where blogs are practically unheard of if you look across the leading Montreal news outlets. Even less pertaining to fashion. Most of the magazines and newspapers are owned by the same company, thus all websites are grouped under one roof. This can only mean that if the company cannot acknowledge updating themselves technology wise, all publications suffer the same fate.

Thus I bring you to the starting journey of a Montreal fashion blog winding itself up on the web and making use of the blog technologies.

I’ve put some some RSS feeds of some of the fashion blogs that I like to read on a regular basis, so far only one pertains to Montreal (and it’s not even about fashion!) since it’s the only one in English.

Créativité Montreal is a weekly online magazine on the latest design projects happening around the Montreal area. It touches base on architectural, interior and 3D object design. The articles are written by design enthusiast Sylvie Berkowicz, who hosted the now defunct design tv show “.d” on MusiMax.

The Business of Fashion is maintained by Imran Amed, part of the 360Fashion network. He offers his opinion of another side of the fashion industry we don’t hear often which is, of course, business. He posts regularly on the latest business ventures some companies take, from The Gap to Azzedine Alaïa, as well as my favorite topic of “Fashion 2.0″, the merging of technology and fashion.

Hilary Alexander of the The Daily Telegraph was someone whom Sylvie Berkowicz interviewed often for her show “.d” after fashion shows. Hilary has an incredible flair for the written word in describing a show. She’s absolutely my favorite fashion critic, though perhaps she’s not the most controversial. You can also see video reporting of the latest fashion show.

The Sartorialist is a photo fashion blog created by Scott Schuman. He rose to fame over the last year for having a keen eye for fashionable individuals on the streets of New York city. His simplistic photography skills have led him to contributing to Vogue, Style.com, GQ, and traveling abroad to the fashion capitals of Milan, Paris, London, Stockholm and recently Beijing. Once you start reading his blog, it’s hard to stop.

I hope you’ll enjoy reading what Dualité will bring to the Montreal, and hope the future will be bright for our fair Canadian city!