Tales from the Back Row Read Online Free Page A

gifts theyget, the better off they are, because who running an indie website really has the money to fly to São Paolo Fashion Week? And if you’re in the business of sharing photos of yourself wearing clothes and aren’t independently wealthy, where would you be without free or heavily discounted clothes with which to continually update your look? For this type of blogger, the consequence of receiving so much free stuff is that you pretty much have to cover all of it favorably or only feature stuff you truly love. So you end up with a fan site. I don’t see this as much different from fashion magazines like Vogue or Harper ’s Bazaar that primarily promote the goods of their advertisers and cover things they love in the most—if at times, painfully—positive fashion. These sites are often very personality driven, even if they’re not solely about how a certain person dresses.
    4. Instagram “celebs.” People with half a million followers, who are known better for that than anything else. They might have a blog, too, but their agents (because fashion blogging has become so weirdly lucrative and fame making, it now requires agents) tout their impressively robust Instagram followings as chief among their talents.
    5. Street-style photographers. The most famous street-style photographers, like Phil Oh, Scott “the Sartorialist” Schuman, and Tommy Ton, got their start by posting to their own sites photos they took of people wearing outfits. Though photographers of their caliber now get a lot of high-paying commercial work, they’re still called bloggers because they still update their websites—the main reason they came to be known in the first place. But they’re really not bloggers in my mind so much as photojournalists. And they’ve become remarkably powerful—they sit front row at shows and get paid tens of thousands of dollars and up to shoot major ad campaigns. What’s more, getting photographed by one of them has become a true accomplishment. Wearing an oversized angora coat and man loafers to a fashion show, catching the eye of the Sartorialist, getting photographed by him, and then seeing your photo land on his site is the street-style version of admission to Harvard. An irrefutable nod to your utmost talent in dressing yourself.
    The distinction between bloggers (the lesser) and other print media people (more legitimate, allegedly) is not only disappearing but actually reversing. Whereas they used to begrudgingly award bloggers and vloggers standing tickets and didn’t care about that thing called Instagram, now brands practically beg internet stars to show up to events and fashion shows and Instagram something—anything! If a PR person overhears you saying “That tiny coffee cup is cute; we should Instagram that!” they will come running up to you and ask if a waiter can bring one over on a private tray with its own thumbnail-sized coordinating donut. Practically every professional writer and photographer in the world now works on something that could qualify as a blog and, therefore, could be categorized as a blogger. It’s impossible to work in media in any form now and not put your work on the internet in some way. Yet at the same time, putting myself and the Blonde Salad (yes, that’s a real personal-style blogger) and Phil Oh in the same category is like seeing dolphins and whales and mermaids jumping around in the ocean and calling them all “fish.”
    We need to implement new distinctions for “new media” people. As much I would like it to be my job, I am never going to succeed in making a career out of posting photos of myself wearing different outfits for people to enthuse over on the internet.
    As for my personal style, it progressed slower than the speedof fossilization. When I started at the Cut, I knew as much about fashion as I did about gardening. Just as I knew soil is required to grow