The last few weeks have been a relatively refreshing time for honest coverage of women’s issues and fashion. With the launch of Jezebel and the frequent posting schedule of Coutorture and Fashionista I feel like a few more honest voices are out there crying into the night. I would venture to say that we are still treated pretty badly by and large by the establishment but the strength in numbers aspect of our daily coverage has me feeling a tad bit better. Anna and Faran make me feel less alone in my daily coverage of the ups and downs of fashion.
But despite our ardor Cathy Horyn still believes that fashion is run by oligarchs. And I suppose she has a point in that everyone in fashion has someone stopping them from telling the truth. Publicists keep me from attending events (for instance despite Gucci having paid thousands of dollars for my health and hospital bills, having my partner be a full time Gucci employee, working towards a video project with their marketing team, ohh and that small point that I having a well read blog and network of blogs I can’t even get standing room at the damn Gucci cruise show, at least I already saw the styling photos but the point still stands) editors keep Cathy from writing what she wants, and cultural moores keep any of us from making any headway on why we tolerate an industry that fucks with our body so much.
To write what you are interested in writing, and to succeed in getting editors to pay for it, is a feat that may require pretty close calculation and a good deal of ingenuity. You have to learn to load solid matter into notices of ephemeral happenings; you have to develop a resourcefulness at pursing a line of thought through pieces on miscellaneous and more or less fortuitous subjects; and you have to acquire a technique of slipping over on the routine of editors the deeper independent work which their over-anxious intentness on the fashions of the month or the week have conditioned them automatically to reject.� This is from Edmund Wilson, in a 2005 piece by Louis Menand, and I keep its essence in the back of my head.
Ahhh Cathy how you sum it all up. I believe though that in the ever present battle of truth versus beauty it is only in the ephemera that we can ask the tough questions. And a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down am I right? And while society goes down the toilet (is it ever not spinning down the drain?) we can take moments of the cultural zeitgeist and frame humanity’s longest running questions against their glittering backdrop. In that sense fashion journalism offers the most opportunities for substance amidst the style, dissenting voices in the subjective masses, and a chance for oligarchs to be toppled and reestablished all over again. We just have to keep reminding ourselves that is worth continueing to speak even when most of us would rather we be silent.
man, i wish i were allowed to rant like that. we share the same soapbox, even if i’m silent.
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