I had a thought while flipping through the December 2005 InStyle. And as the lovely Gwyneth Paltrow smiled up at me I had a thought and it wasn’t a nice one. I am sick and tired of see Gwyn EVERYWHERE! I think she is a wonderful person and I appreciate dedication to motherhood but damn it I am tired of magazines using her to sell. She smiles up from Estee Lauder adds, every magazine known to man, and finally as I got rifled through the pages of InStyle I got it. Unless you ARE a celebrity magazine or a magazine focused on people’s lives and the lives of the stars just go easy on the celebrity binge in fashion ok?
Now everyone has to have a hot celebrity on the cover if they want things to sell, and magazines have to sell if they want lots of ads, and magazines can’t pay their staff unless things sell. What ever happened to those old brilliant covers from Harper’s Bazaar?
The fusion of celebrity with fashion has simply turned fashion into a tool for publicists and editors without vision.
And now on to Tom Ford. I never used to have a problem with the man until a connection just fired in my overworked synapses. He is the man who gave us sex-infused glamour and made it mandatory. He took away mystery in fashion and made everything overt. He is the man who pushed logo upon logo upon logo. He made us ache for the jet set lifestyle. And who but celebrities live the jet set? Sure socialites do, but we couldn’t relate to that idea until the Hiltons and now socialites have become celebrities. Ford’s new Vanity Fair styling project for the Oscars just proves my point (and I love Vanity Fair, still has good writing no matter what anyone says) the man who gave us envy is now styling it in the most expensive clothing possible for the one night where everything that is celebrity and very little is art comes to a head. These tendencies, whether they are the cause or the symptom I do not know, but I do know they represent all that is awful in fashion for me today. Bring back real glamour I say! Bring back real style! And let a model have a cover once in a while so they don’t feel the need to snap up so many cosmetics endorsements.
OK, a random not related thought: someone has combined consulting and fashion! Plum Bunny Too bad I probably can’t get in on it.
InStyle: ech.
The use of celebrities is a plot to sell fashion to the masses. This is as old as movie rags itself, in the thirties most women would read movie star mags… women with more sophisticated pretensions would read Vogue and Bazaar. Movie stars have a huge effect on fashion. Jessica Simpson as Daisy Duke is the reason that there’s cowboyboots all over the place. The money/celebrity connection is what that is all about. I love movies and movie stars and pop music and pop stars… as much as I’d love to keep fashion for the fashion people… this truly is a big part of fashion right now.
The best thing that could happen would be if all the real fashion-people got so sick of it they just stopped buying American Vogue. Like me. Never-ever again. No more InStyle, InTouch or any more InCrap.
Why so hard on Tom Ford? He usually used models, didn’t he? And he hardly invented the jet set. But in truth, I like him so much more on the downhill than at the top. I think he’ll end up in Vegas at this rate. That W shoot was hilarious… the waxed a**!! I wish I’d bought the mag! How’s that for a wry, sarcastic undermining of the false hopes of perfection he used to sell so well?
http://www.style.com/w/feat_story/100505
And this would be a reason that Fashion Blogging will probably continue to catch on quickly. Even better that’s it’s fashion from real people with some of the mainstream media and models interspersed. Mainstream media seems to have forgotten to balance things.
I think Tom Ford’s not the right person to blame. It goes a little further back. Madonna probably deserves more blame than Ford.
I am not actually sure we can place blame on anyone in particular but I think that Ford is emblematic of someone who capitalized on an unfortunate trend. And a trend it was considering that Ford is now struggling to maintain his crediblity in the fashion world
It’s fair to say that publications like In Style & marketing geniuses like Tom Ford manipulate people’s desires to a certain degree – but at what point are they merely catering to our desires & giving consumers what they want? http://fashiontribes.typepad.com/main/2005/11/tk_black_friday_2.html