truth hurts

Sometimes, the best kind if friend is the one who won't hold back. The type of person who tells it like it is, and coats absolutely nothing in sugar. These are the types of people that you have edit your work, your wardrobe, and your perspectives when need be. These are also the types of people who can critique you, whose opinions you value, and whose smarts can outsmart you no matter the subject.

Jamie Thomas is one of those friends. I welcome his thoughts, his considerations, his criticisms, and today, his guest appearance on this blog. I know. Lucky duck, right?

Making blog hopping somewhat of a sport, Jamie is a well read world-wide-webber, and has voiced many an opinion on the blogosphere, and all of its incumbents. In an email I received this morning, he topped up a conversation we had started this weekend, and abridged it so eloquently that it just had to be posted. Sometimes, the truth stings. And sometimes, it's just interesting to read.

Ladies and gentlemen, James Grover Thomas:

“I just want to do something meaningful with my life, Maury… I have deeper thoughts on my mind”

- Derek Zoolander

If it is somewhat surprising to me that the term ‘fashion-blog’ ever got off the ground, then their ubiquity is stunning. Who, I wondered, could possibly wring from their clothing and the clothing of others even one mildly entertaining post – never mind thousands. I can probably date this notion sometime between late 2005 and early 2006 and must have rushed off to Indie Night at the Collective before adequately exploring the thought – I was, it turns out, wrong.

Of course fashion-blogs flourished – what better medium to explore the tension between individual style and collective fashion than the internet blogosphere, itself rife with issues of collectivity and individuality – where people are only famous if you don’t know them? Fashion blogs are perfectly tailored to concise explorations of why people wear what they wear, the ideas that inform the dress, the cultural buzz that makes Hubbell Gardner’s sweater cool again.

Why, then, the proliferation of blogs about fashion that seem to have had all intellectual curiosity bound and gagged by the copy and paste keys? Elsa Schiaparelli, a fashion legend responsible for integrating Dadaist and Surrealist ideas into the world of haute-couture, once wrote that "Fashion is born by small facts, trends, or even politics."

It is – so think about it; it is not enough to show us what you like, show us why. Only by following through on their ideas can fashion-blogs pull themselves from the blogosphere-gutter replete with vapid party-photos. Only then does it mean anything.

Here’s how to think and talk somewhat intelligently about fashion.

**The views and opinions expressed in this post are not necessarily that of the blogger's, although, she sometimes wishes they were.