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Instagram or Vogue? Social Media Recreates our View on High Fashion

10 years ago, in 2007, high fashion was foreign to most. The only time you would see high fashion would be on t.v shows like America's Next Top Model, Red Carpets or the wildly successful and witty movie The Devil Wears Prada.

To women, keeping up with the names, reputation and most importantly the price tag of high fashion seemed unattainable and a waste of time.

Social media has dramatically changed the reputation of high fashion from unattainable to approachable.

Independant.CO Uk acknowledges “No longer are the traditional gatekeepers responsible for steering trends or pushing smaller brands to the forefront” assuring that bloggers and instagrammers do not hold any biases.

What I mean by this is that a magazine is far less likely to say something negative about a brand that pays millions a year to advertise with them. A blogger has nothing to lose, their profits and audience will be relatively the same whether they bash a brand or praise it.

Bloggers are thought of as more authentic and honest, not to mention their bodies are not that of models but more realistic to their viewers. Bloggers can paint a more realistic version of where high fashion can and can’t be pulled off. They are regular people, just like us.

Sarah Young from the independent states- “Instead of flicking through a magazine once a month to find out what’s hot and what’s not, now you can discover fashion in real-time.”

Right now, a subscription to Vogue, Harpers Bazzar and most other magazines are about 12 dollars a year. But how often is it that we have the time and patience to flip through a magazine, when our phones are constantly in our hand and faster to navigate what we want to see.Not to mention, bloggers can access new releases and post about them fairly quickly whereas magazines can only publish once a month.

With this uproar in bloggers become more influential in trends and consumption, major fashion magazines are working to embrace and incorporate bloggers into their sites. Harpers Bazzar published a list of The 22 Fashion Blogger Instagrams to Follow now. The list features a group of women ranging from “Vintage loving New Yorkers and edgy Aussie Beauties”

Social media has built the platform for the working women, the college students, the aspiring performers and artists of the world, to decide what we want the trends to be.We no longer want to be readers, we want to be influencers.

We have been given the platform to initiate and inspire trends through something as simple as an instagram post or a snapchat story.

This makes the experience for the user feel much more personalized. Instead of looking at a model on the top of a building in NYC we see a young professional headed off to a job interview, or an artist heading off to a gallery. We don’t just enjoy viewing the bloggers outfit, we also become attached to their lifestyle.

So what does this mean for the future of fashion? Will designers begin creating more affordable spin-offs of high end lines when asked for? Will magazine’s websites become more personalized and appoint bloggers of their own?

We will see what the big name magazines need to do to keep up with the personalization and timeliness that these bloggers have against them.

What do you think magazines need to do to compete?