Inefficient party of one! Print Media.
I was watching the Devil Wears Prada last night, and it amazed me how much things have changed.
Could this really be the end of an era for the Miranda Priestlys of the world? First off, great movie if you haven't seen it. Anyone who has ever been an assistant can appreciate the organic nature of the material ... I digress.
The film stars Meryl Streep as a fictional spin on the notorious (USED PROPERLY) Anna Wintour. The cold as ice, regimented, probably hasn't gotten laid since the 80s, editor of Vogue magazine.
What really struck me was the scrapped $300,000 photo shoot.
There was so much stock in one person's opinion, that suddenly $300,000 became completely irrelevant. How unbelievably inefficient!!!! I am very aware this is only a movie, however there is always truth in jest - and I am SURE there are instances just like this if you go around looking for them.
It was like we've been living this life in which we thought we were making all of our own decisions, only to find out we were merely very freaky puppets being controlled by the three people that run the planet. Case and point, when Miranda makes mention of Andy's (played by Anne Hathaway) bargain basement blue sweater ...
This... 'stuff'? Oh... ok. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don't know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise, it's not lapis, it's actually cerulean. You're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn't it, who showed cerulean military jackets? I think we need a jacket here. And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of stuff.
The walls they are a crumbling down. With bloggers invading NY fashion week's front row, and print advertisers running away faster than you can say "Indiana Jones" ... you can kind of see why a change was needed. The system was so unbelievably inefficient. There were too many people with their hands in the honey pot, collaborating on one piece delivered every 30 days, ruled by a dictator who at the end of the day had the absolute final say.
Now, you can create a blog, position yourself as the go-to-fashion-expert, publish daily, hourly, up to the minute even - reach the same amount and if not more. Oh yeah, and you're doing this all from your apartment, so the Manhattan skyscraper is not necessary.
People's tastes have changed. We want things delivered to us now, now, now. The RTW (real time web) will only propel our expectations into greater heights in 2010. We don't have time to wait for 30 days to see the collaborative effort of a couple hundred to thousand people, in what a handful can accomplish in a day.
The same art, minus the politics.