Whenever FW rolls around, I find myself reflecting upon the nature of fashion, the industry as a whole, and my role in it (or lack thereof). This season was no different. Rather than fashionably skulking around the Tents or rushing to try to catch someone's last minute Reject Show, I focused all of my enthusiasm upon the Independent Fashion Bloggers conference,
Evolving Influence, organized by Jennine Tamm Jacob of none other than
IFB. You'll remember that I have already hinted at how
awesome it was!
We discussed ethics in blogging and journalism and the FTC and how magazines tend
not to look the gift horse in the mouth (what does that phrase meeeeeeean?), and we all turn a blind eye to the general shmooziness of the fashion, marketing, PR, and publishing industries, and yet bloggers! the poor-recently-un-disenfranchised-commoners! are now held to stricter rules than Her Highness Wintour. And this was all very interesting to work out and discuss on stage, because, as you may know, I studied philosophy, and Ethics is but one branch of the former.
My plan is to tell you my blogging revelations interjected with photos of fashion blog celebrities, because I am hoping that their awesomeness will bleed from their likenesses into my words, or that they will hold your attention a few seconds longer while I wax poetic on the grand pseudo-modernist topic of:
BLOGGING.
(tutti cutie)
Perhaps it was the light-hearted convos of the Famous Ones or the general sense of merriment and community found in the auditorium populated by those who identify as both Fashion and Blog ... or the fact that, coincidentally, I happened to watch
Julie & Julia that night (and loved! Meryl Streep is marvelous)...well, anyway...I found a new respect and confidence in my blog and myself.
Through her year long Julia Child Recipe Project, Julie of
Julie & Julia keeps a cooking/blogging routine wherein she nearly loses her darling husband, but also discovers herself, as
writer and not mere Government Worker, and basically comes back to the things she's always known, her true self, through...blogging! At least that's the way I see it.
I've often fallen back upon the motto "to never betray the way you've always known it is" (
The Shins, anyone? Remember Zach Braff and Natalie Portman and pet
graves?). The things I like about blogging are that (1) I have this sort of routine way to conceptualize and narrate my life stories, that (2) there is therapeutic relief in writing and sharing my thoughts, whereby I rid myself of obsessing over old thoughts, make room for new and awesome thoughts and thus, move forward in heart and mind and that (3) both (1) and (2) allow me to keep moving on the Path of Myself, working towards positive goals, while maintaining inner "centeredness," if that makes any sense. Curiously, the fashion bit is just the manifested outward expression of this.
And so I am energized and inspired to keep doing this thing because it, um, helps me realize my true self? And I believe that being who you are is the best way to happiness and success? And that even the Famous Ones chalked their notoriety up to being themselves honestly and openly? And most importantly, because, like Julie, I take
joy in this thing, in you and in me, this anomaly of space-time where we meet a couple of times a week, this thing called
my blog, from whither we can:
REJOICEand
THRIVE
together on the paths of ourselves,
which can only lead to continued happiness and success.
So, in the name of fashion and blogging and the hearts of ghosts, rejoice!
(In a serendipitous moment, I caught the Reluctant Celebrity prancing elf-like into a waiting Black Car. And she-of-the-printed-capri-pant-and-matronly-clog-and-jeweled-barrette, who, I surmise, is her Mom, is so adorable, so Norwegian, and so Mom.)
Did any of that make sense?
