So another Paris Fashion Week has come to a close, with minimal impact on the normal world. In fact, between the eccentric designers, the egotistical fashion editors and the increasingly big-headed bloggers, there's not much room for normal people in the fashion world. I had once hoped that fashion bloggers might play the role of Alice in Wonderland - the everyday girl in a bizarre world -, but like the very worst reporters, they've started mistaking themselves for their subject. (Note to my wife: of course I'm not talking about you, chérie. Shall we eat out tonight?)
The main problem facing most bloggers is that they don't have an editor to knock them into shape. Before she became a journalist, Suzy Menkes of the Herald Tribune attended a school of haute couture where your knuckles got rapped with a ruler if you didn't sew your seams straight. I imagine she had similar experiences at the hands of demanding editors. Meanwhile, bloggers assume they are brilliant just because they attract thousands of likes from their fawning fans. This sentence, written by the blogger Man Repeller in a post about cool young bloggers versus outmoded journalists, was revealing in its arrogance: "We are over-educated and often over-qualified for the jobs that we do take." No wonder bloggers don't work at magazines - they might be required to do work they consider beneath them.
