#Fashion + #journalism? An oxymoron at times

Thankfully for anyone reading my blog regularly or even only occasionally, I rarely rant. Today, however, I need a bit of rant space. Today I’m thinking about fashion (couture sewing is related to fashion, n’est ce pas?) with a particular emphasis on what passes as “fashion journalism.” In another life, I actually write other things – like books. Couple this with the fact that I’ve been a fashion magazine junkie for more years than most of you have been on the planet, I appreciate a well-written fashion-related article. There have always been those magazines that regularly demonstrate a high level of what can really be defined as fashion journalism (Vogue comes to mind), but there are so many others I have blindly stumbled upon lately that I have to vent a bit.

A lot of what passes for writing in some fashion magazines is now so riddled with jargon, secret in-talk, euphemism and oddly annoying abbreviations that we can’t help but be confused. The truth is that I’m not really a member of the demographic targeted by these magazines, but the demographic certainly is one I’d still like to understand! And I’m not dead yet, so fashion and style interest me. My question is how this demographic will be able to communicate their messages in the future. It’s no wonder that university freshmen can’t write a decent sentence.

Let’s start at the table of contents: we begin with ‘beauty inspo’, ‘fave picks’, ‘uber’ everything and of course a lot of ‘peeps’. I can let ‘favs’ and ‘fab’ go if these short-cuts are not overused. But three times on one page and we’re still only on contents!

How many times do I see ‘collab’? Really? Is it so difficult to spell out collaboration? Even with an online dictionary? And then we’re all ‘crushing on…’ something. The word ‘kicks’ for shoes has become so ubiquitous that if we really mean ‘kick’ as per the dictionary definition, we’d have a failure to communicate.

Moving on from the table of contents, I’m beginning to become very confused. I’m no longer sure of the difference between the hottest things and the coolest. Which is better? Then if we consider ‘cooler than cool’, I can’t even begin to contemplate what that might mean.

The verb ‘to rock’ (and they don’t seem to mean it in the sense of rock the boat or rock the baby) is so pervasive you can hardly go a page tap without falling over someone rocking flats, totally rocking boots, or rocking that awesome furry thing … and I’m so over being ‘all about’ anything especially if has to be hotly, coolly, uber awesome.

I guess the devil is in the ‘deets’ and the thing to do is to acquire ‘must-have prods’. I kid you not…prods, and not that kind they use on cattle.

This publication actually refers to its content creators as journalists – intrepid ones to be precise – and these are journalists who use words/spellings like ‘cuz’ for ‘because’. Yes, they did use it. This is not Twitter peeps! And ‘combo’ could be better applied to a fast food menu. Then I’m really confused when I read that ‘burgundy gets a colour kick’ with nary a shoe in sight in this instance. Is a kick now a kick or a jolt or a …? Of course it wouldn’t be a mag targeted toward young women without a ‘bestie’ or two.

And now sunglasses are ‘sunnies’ or so I inferred from the use of the term next to a photo of such. It’s starting to be a bit like learning a new language or at least the young women so entrenched will have to learn a new one for their writing classes at uni! Like that one? It’s a British-ism. Is that even a word?

Then I read about ‘sick kicks’. Are they hot? Cool? Totally anything? And ‘lippy’ means lipstick. I guess. I thought it meant mouthy, snippy, annoying.

Fave, fave, fave. I guess it would require too much typing to spell it out, or maybe they’re trying to avoid that cultural ‘or’ ‘our’ conundrum (favorite/favourite).

There is little doubt in my mind, peeps, that I’m totally uncool, and clearly unhot, cuz I crush on correct word choice and rock reasonably good spelling, and my fav authors provide me with terrific inspo. I’m also uber happy that the sun is out today and I’m totally rocking my sunnies so I’m going out for a walk. Bye-bye for now.

[Rant over. Sewing projects to continue momentarily.]