The New Age of Fashion Media
Written by Faraday Gamble-Gittings
Like many young girls, my first glimpse into the fashion industry was though the cult fashion film, ‘The Devil Wears Prada’. I was captivated by the glamour of the outfits and desperate to work in a world like that. I listened to the soundtrack religiously and set my sights on a fashion degree at university. Sadly, I was quickly proven wrong and shown the real world of fashion journalism- the cluttered news desks, less than glamorous hours of steaming by interns and the struggle it takes to break into the industry.
At the time of the now iconic films release, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and the world of print fashion magazines were dominating the trend setting space. They defined our ideas, thoughts and feelings around the latest fashion news, new season styles and popular designers. But nearly 20 years later, the hold these fashion giants had on us is dwindling fast.
“Magazines were the original influencer,” explains Stephen Spear, fashion critique and author of ‘Fashion Writing: Journalism and Content Creation”. “But the paper products have lost ground in numbers. Even fashion undergraduates who profess a love of printed materials and magazines don’t always read them even if they love the physical artifacts”.
And that is just what they seem to have been relegated to: artifacts and antiquities reminiscent of their previous dominance and a play thing for the insiders of the fashion world. They lack the fresh, exciting ideas we once looked to them for and instead churn out content that possesses a sense of permanence that doesn’t always align with the innovation and speed of the fashion industry.
But we don’t need a revival.
“Why restrict ourselves to print,” asks Spear and we echo that idea. To say fashion publications are dying sounds like a negative and disastrous event, but it is far from that. Fashion media is not dead, it has simply evolved. Long form features for Vogue and editorial shoots for Elle have been dethroned by instagram carousels, digital writing spaces and a smorgasbord of TikTok videos.
Influencers and content creators have been crowned the arbiters of taste and the trend setters of the current fashion landscape. Their short, aesthetic and attention grabbing content, tailored to the type of niches that traditional magazines don’t have the capacity to cater for, have taken over the business of trend setting. We turn to these trusted voices, individuals whose lives we watch and enjoy, for advice, trends and information on where to shop. We now read zines, substacks and personal newsletters for the features that once took up multiple pages and surf Pinterest for outfit inspiration.
“Quality reporting is not linked to paper outcomes and readers are less bothered about whether their source has skin in the game- they just want good looking, well crafted content,” says Stephen, pointing out that this authentic and high caliber content is not only intrinsic to the old guard fashion magazines.
What these fashion publications lack is not quality, their content is still beautifully written, shot and presented- what they lack is freshness.
And it's this newness that readers and consumers are finding in the new voices, young creators and unconventional journalists that can be found in these digital spaces.
The old guard, traditional magazines and elite publications seem set to parade around an established collection of writers, voices and designers. They go with results and look at the evidence- new and possibly unestablished names are a risk, and so the likes of vogue don’t want to take that risk on a writer with no track record. They stick to what they know and what works.
But they forget that this is also what we know. We’ve heard these voices too many times, grown too accustomed to their phrases and the tone of their articles, we’ve seen the same stylists use the same styling trick and pawed over the same shot by the same photographer each issue.
Consumers want these new voices, these fresh eyes and these undiscovered talents, and if the big publications can’t do that, the consumer can easily seek them out themselves. They won’t sit around and wait for these new voice to come to them, and if these aspiring young creatives are at the niche publications or creating TikTok videos, that’s where readers will turn.
Gen-z want to step away from the traditional publications- they want to disrupt the scene and revive fashion media- but that doesn’t mean reviving the traditional print publications we once collected and read en mass. It means looking to the future, to new voices, platforms and outputs, whether traditional publishing wants to do this as well is out of control.
As Spear suggests, “every threat to the fashion media does become an opportunity…It’s certainly not all doom and gloom.”
