Are We Becoming Scared of Challenging Fashion?

(some innovative women in fashion: Julie Zerbo, Angela Ahrendts and Suzy Menkes) 

(none of these pictures are my own)

With ever increasing numbers of fashion, street style and other blogs revolved around some aspect to the individual, it becomes escalatingly difficult to create a dialogue between yourself and the reader. Why? Perhaps because blogs (and increasingly magazines) no longer talk about important issues in the fashion industry such as racism and feminism, or really even write pieces about the art behind the true form of fashion, and are now talking about purely vain and mundane subjects such as what outfit the blogger wore where and 'How to Look Skinny at Fashion Week'... yes ELLE US, I'm pointing at you.

Are we scared of challenging the art world that is fashion and pushing the boundaries so far they have to burst? What is wrong with wanting to help and industry grow and develop alongside society? Art critics, writers and historians can be the most eloquent of writers and seem to get an incredibly fulfilling life out of creating a dialogue with, not only their readers, but the art they are critiquing, allowing their audience to appreciate art on a higher level of understanding. 

 Julie Zerbo of The Fashion Law (in fact, probably one of my favourite fashion journalists) writes in her article on 'Reading Fashion Blogs is Probably Making You Dumber':

"These are fashion blogs and not the Economist, but guess what: Its 2014, and fashion is increasingly shedding its stigma as an industry full of over-dressed, under-educated  girls. There are many, many exceptions to this rule (Hey, Áslaug Magnúsdóttir, Angela Ahrendts, Vanessa Friedman, Christina Binkley, Maureen Chiquet, Caroline Issa, Sara Ziff, etc.). Fashion and brainpower shouldn’t be mutually exclusive, and yet, it seems in the blogosphere, they largely are."

It seems for some reason, bloggers are intent on fitting in to the mold of blogger; writing about topics that they know will bring the most views possible to their blog and hooking up with brands that they, frankly, have only decided to collaborate with to get free clothes and not to actually make a difference to the industry they are in fact dedicating a shed load of their time too.

Perhaps you are reading this and thinking 'but I like seeing what random girls in Los Angeles wear and reading about how to make my bum look smaller in jeans', which is fine, I just wouldn't recommend you try to become a hot shot in fashion because the industry deserves women and men who are going to challenge, discuss and innovate.

Ruby

P.S I am aware I fall under the large umbrella that is 'fashion blogger' because I write about fashion and this is a blog. But no.