The Red Carpet Project

The Front Row has acquainted me with the world of style blogging, with many of my participants in the project being style bloggers themselves.  A key element of style blogs is the outfit post, where the blogger presents a photographic essay of an outfit.  I attempted to create my own outfit post, a task which emphasized for me both the sense of purpose and the photographic and sartorial accomplishment required to prepare and present an outfit post.

A white organza dress with silver slip was chosen from The Front Row collection to wear to The Spirit of the Black Dress Gala during LMFF.  While the event itself was lovely, the outfit post was a disaster from the beginning.  Arriving home from work when I should have been leaving the house gave me scant time to devote to a hair, make-up and outfit styling regime worthy of a high standard outfit post.  My problems were compounded by having moved house only two weeks prior and not being in possession of the requisite full length mirror in which to develop my outfit.  A cracked 10cm square make up mirror was hardly adequate for evaluating the balance of my proposed combination of shoes, dress and hair.  I resorted to snapshots outside the house to check on hair and make-up.

Hair down?  Oops, note mascara above eyelid.

Half up, half down?  A bit eighties, I don’t know you can pull it off if you were there the first time.

Up and to the side?  Better. Interesting.

Hissing a frantic “I’m almost there” into my phone, I threw on my favourite black tailored jacket from All Saints in London and sped to the tram, checking my outfit in the car windows along the way.  The dress was lovely to wear, the silk slip against my skin made me wonder why I waste so much time in polyester and nylon tops and the organza overlay fluttered around my legs.

Of course I forgot the most important element of an outfit post which is a styled and posed picture of my outfit.  This was taken when I remembered; back home late at night and my interesting up-and-to-the-side hair already taken down.  I also forgot to get any photographs of myself with significant people at the event, of which there were plenty, because I totally let my guard down and became otherwise preoccupied with generally enjoying myself and having interesting conversations with the various designers whose work was featured at the parade.  Each dress in this event must employ strategies of design for sustainability, and thus it was wonderful to discuss the various techniques employed by each person as well as to chat with such kindred spirits about our hopes for our design practices as well as our industry.  I was however photographed with my boyfriend and featured on facebook the next day.  Nine people liked the picture.

This photo by Kellie Dene

Thrillingly, my dress lasted all the way through a raucous maxi cab ride across town to the Chinese restaurant at the end of the night before I noticed the hand stitched organza layer had largely fallen apart and I was trailing organza remnants through Chinatown (a slight exaggeration) The dress was in need of significant repair by the end of the night but I was delighted that this had been the case, as it was my intention that each dress be only as durable as the event for which it was intended.  The organza was promptly detached from its lining and hung proudly in all its distressed and deconstructed beauty for the remainder of the exhibition.

There is a growing body of academic and journalistic literature on this recent practice, and among it I enjoyed an article by Rosie Findlay, whose PhD is on style blogs and who blogs herself.  Rosie’s article “At one remove from reality: Style bloggers and outfit posts” contends that style blogging “presents a mode of presenting one’s self that both embodies fashion’s imagery whilst depicting an individual expression of style as felt by the blogger as they literally dress themselves into sight.”

The style blogger mimics the established fashion media, using the conventions of fashion photography, be it the look book or the editorial genre to “literally dress yourself into view”.  Rosie points out that the style blogging genre has evolved in terms presentation to the point that the purpose of the outfit, details of where it is to be worn or the reasoning behind the photoshoot location are ambiguous or unexplained, however this was not my experience during “The Front Row”.  The bloggers who wore my dresses used their outfit as a conduit to report on the event for which the outfit was procured.  Their posts constituted both journalistic reportage of the event, whist maintaining the conventions of the outfit post.  The event consisted of wearing a particular outfit to it and the outfit post is therefore a valid and personalized means of describing what happened at the event.