Are Bloggers Just Mobile Mannequins?

Does fame dictate fashion?

'Cause fashion sure as hell doesn't dictate fame. 

(If it did, we'd all be front and center at Milan Fashion Week right now).

I mean, think of your favorite big-time fashion blogger: 

Is she big because she's fashionable, or is she "fashionable" because she's big?

Don't get me wrong - I'm well aware of the snowball effect of fame. Like the rest of the world, I'm instinctively inclined to be more impressed by someone who is already famous than by someone who is not (whether or not that fame is legitimate or manufactured is another story). 

For example: Remember when Vogue used to feature models on its cover? Remember when "Fashion" could exist solely for the sake of "Fashion", and not as a subset of something else? (see: awards shows, movies, "lifestyle" blogs, etc, etc).

Nowadays, though, "Fashion" comes as an afterthought to so many other issues. Celebrities carry the brunt of its power. What they wear is immediately "in", and, like Kate Middleton's wardrobe, sells out faster than any editorial or runway show could ever cause it to do. 

So what's the fashion industry to do?

Succumb to the power of the often poorly-dressed celebrities with volatile personalities and scandalous lives, or . . . 

create their own "celebrities". 

Might they stoop to finding beautiful, nonvocal, people, giving them beautiful things, and publicizing their subsequently beautiful pictures in order to create the illusion of fame. 

In order to sell a product. 

Might this be why a random pretty girl from Long Island is suddenly appearing in monthly e-mails from my favorite brand, or why that one eclectic looking girl with a heavily-populated Lookbook page and ceaseless swimsuit selfies is now in the ads in all of my favorite magazines, or why that super skinny Aussie girl is now the brand ambassador for like, 15, of my favorite companies?

shirt: American Apparel, shorts: UO, shoes: Anthropologie

Could "collaborating" with the "big" brands make you "big", and henceforth make you an ideal vessel for the "big" brand's product? Are we following these people because they're fashionable, or are they "fashionable" because we're being told to follow them? Were these puppet girls style-concious on their own, sans the attention from these major brands? Would we really find them so "ah-mazingly" fashionable if they didn't have 335k Instagram followers, or 10,000 page views a day or... (see: The Blonde Salad's earliest posts). 

I have no problem with fashion evolving into some thing COMPLETELY revolutionary. Maybe the future of fashion is purely social, or entirely digital, or automatic at birth.

 But this!? Are we creating a culture of mobile mannequins? 

On that light note!--

Cheers.