fashion blogs! the good, the bad, and the rest will have to wait

when i think of fashion blogs i think of fun, entertaining picture book-like blogs that express creativity and arouse visual interest and inspiration in the reader/viewer. they can be personal, industry-focused or just plain pictures (like one of my favorites, the sartorialist).

what i like about the sartorialist is that it's simple - minimal commentary, great shots of people sporting unique looks - the images really speak for themselves. the quality and taste level of the images shown on the site are enough to let the audience know that we are respected as viewers. i have to emphasize that these photos are simple, delicate, tasteful, and yet have their own stories to share. these stories are brief but articulate, like a well-written haiku, or words spoken by a sage.

there are blogs, on the other hand, like fashion indie, who resort to scandalizing displays of tastelessness "just because it's friday." in the "just because it's friday" post i saw today i was appalled at the play on those inspirational/motivational posters. you know, the ones that show a picture, a large word (like "teamwork") and a small blurb at the bottom elucidating the significance of said large word. all right. pretty uninspired template to begin with. but not half as bad as the images and messages contained within. three out of eight of these frames contain purely size-ist jokes: boring, normative, and just plain cruel. the other five frames are supposed to be funny because the text frames the image subjects as stupider than we (the viewers) supposedly are. all in all, not what i would expect from a fashion blog. i say, if you're gonna post something like that, don't bother posting. it's purely insulting.

which brings me to my next point, the book i'm reading called fashion as communication by a brit named malcolm barnard. i haven't gotten too deep into it yet, though the author has thus far discussed fashion as a form of communication, cultural reproduction, and (if you're one to take a conflict theorist stance) of course then follows the ways in which fashion is used to reproduce dynamics of power and privilege. i knew that some day my love for fashion and design and my invariably sociological mind would find a happy marriage - and apparently these are the days!

more to come regarding sociology, fashion, and shifting oppressive paradigms!