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.

He’s only 25 and has already garnered praised and comparisons to high profiled designers. Rad Hourani has made heads turn this past Spring/Summer 2008 during Paris Fashion Week with his unisex collection, and has been nominated as one of Style.com‘s Top Ten New Designers. He’s a self-taught Montreal stylist and has had his first collection bought by chain fashion giant Holt Renfrew (to which now I have to check out). He’s also been featured in the Montreal Gazette and most recently interviewed by The Business of Fashion about his vision and his upcoming show for New York Fashion Week Fall 2008. A look at his website and you can see that he is no ordinary stylist turned designer, as he is just as much into his little short artsy films and black and white photographs.

We’ll be keeping an eye on this man!

For my own little 2 cents though, it seems Montreal designers have been caught with some sort of obsession with black and white…why is that??