She is a fashion rookie perhaps. Style is something entirely different from Fashion-Slave.
I'm sure she's a sweet little girl, but the media frenzy around her is just silly and rather exploitative and robbing her of her youth which is being spent being famous. Magazines like Teen Vogue and nitwits like Miley Cyrus are shoved at teen girls as role models and How-to manuals...How to be a Shopper! and be like everyone else while buying crap you don't need and don't want. That's the job of Mainstream Media...and the Mainstream but faux-indie Bloggerati.
She is 1000% mainstream. Nothing wrong with that, if that's her choice.
Just a few pages of reading her blog reveals these designer namedrops....Rei Kawakubo...Proenza Schouler...Miu Miu...Celine...Comme des Garcons...Marc Jacobs, and farther back..."Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons, Vivienne Westwood, Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte, Tao Kurihara of Tao, Alexander McQueen, Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren of Viktor & Rolf, Nozomi Ishiguro, Yohji Yamamoto, Maison Martin Margiela, Junya Watanabe, Luella Bartley of Luella, and Gareth Pugh, to name a few *ahem*, but I am always discovering new ones which I adore as well. Right now I'm very into Sandra Backlund, especially after happily receiving my Yokoo scarf. And of course, the fake Karl Lagerfield."
So GOOD Grief people! She LOOOOves designers. Just like millions of other girls/women. Nothing special there.
And now the designers send her stuff for free, so she blogs about those designers that send her stuff, and they send her stuff for free, so she blogs about those designers.......
detect a pattern here?
She talks about the same subjects all the other young fashion bloggers blog about, such as the Future of Digital Fashion Blogging, DIY mixed with HighEnd Fashion, Fat Models Are Good, Skinny Models Are Bad, pervy photographers, blah blah blah.
I liked her better when she first started ...when she dressed like characters which are more like her little girl personality,because she is ...NEWS FLASH... a little girl.
All children collect and begin to really develop a love for their hobbies at about age 10 -11. Her fashion Love is not unique and not weird either.
Her take on Thrift Store shopping is the same stuff all the other fashion bloggers are saying....and NO, Salvation Army,ST. Vincent de Paul and Goodwill are not in business to sell things cheap to poor people....SA, Vinnies, and Good are there primarily to sell things to middle class and lower middle class people to fund Do-Gooder programs that help poor people. BIG difference! I know this to be true because I read like, um, history. Now, of course, everyone shops the thrifts...Rich and not-so-rich alike because it's Trendy !!!!
But this recent online blurb about starting up Sassy the magazine again really gave me pause.....
Dazed Digital: What’s your big ideaCity talk about?
Tavi: It’s basically about what Sassy magazine would look like today. Because there aren’t any counter cultures, so what would make it subversive?
DD: And what is that?
Tavi: It would be subversive not by latching onto a subversive band or clothing style, because those, you know, there isn’t any counter culture. It would be subversive just in that it would be honest and tell teenage girls that, like, our opinions matter and to be ourselves and stuff. Other magazines, I feel, don’t succeed in doing that. There’s insincerity.
OH GOOD GOD!
Yes, Tavi there are plenty of countercultures....People who eschew consumerism, homeschooling parents, folks who grow their own food, folks who work from home, people who bicycle/public transit to work when they don't have to, people who dumpster dive, people who make their way in the world without corporate jobs, artists and musicians.....
And, bottom line, you can't have it both ways: "...tell teenage girls that, like, our opinions matter and to be ourselves and stuff." AND be a slave to high-end Designer consumerism. Choose a side. That's the clever thing to do.
2 comments:
I'm sorry but I could not disagree with you more. You say that there is nothing unique or special about Tavi, but there is. How many adolescent girls take their love of the fashion industry and channel it in such a way that the people high up in the industry notice it? Not many. And you say there is nothing "weird" about her love of fashion. She doesn't get called weird because of her love if fashion, she gets called "weird" because if her quirky sense of style and her insights on fashion. Tavi is an exceptional girl whom I admire. And she must be doing something right because people are noticing and they're liking what they see.
Sydney, you are entitled to your opinion, but you didn't read my article.
you ask --How many adolescent girls take their love of the fashion industry and channel it in such a way that the people up high in the industry notice it? you say...
I'll tell you.
Rich girls who have a lot of help in the fashion industry. She didn't come out of nowhere...she and her helpers calculated how to get media exposure.
And it worked.
That is mainstream.
That's my point.
She isn't special,or creative. She's an attention-wanter! Trying to schmooze rich and famous people isn't clever or hard. They have huge egos, so attention is what they crave also.
Since mainstream print publications are losing their grip, blogging is the In Thing. Huge corporations, ie, The Fashion Industry, are using her. If it wasn't Tavi, it would be another little girl. There are dozens and dozens of young girls and teenagers who are doing the same thing, dressing exactly the same way, dropping all the same designer names....Her name just got picked. It could have been any clone.
*****She doesn't have a quirky sense of style...she has the exact same sense of "style" ALL the other street-style bloggers have.
*****15 years ago that was quirky, today it is mainstream.*****
Read my post again. I'm thinking you may not understand media manipulation, and that "indie" is being packaged and sold to you.
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