Why I Don’t Care About Fashion Week

Every year around this time, the requests start to come rolling in:

Could I write a post about my favourite trends for fashion week? What about one on what to wear to fashion week? OK, well, if I had to pick a car to take to fashion week, which car would I pick? Could I maybe write about THAT? On and on it goes, with brands coming up with ever-more tenuous ways to try to jump on board the fashion week bandwagon, and get themselves some coverage associated with it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful that they think my blog is worth appearing on, so I’m not complaining about the approaches. The fact is, though, I never write about fashion week, because… well, I kind of hate it, to be perfectly honest.

Wait: that’s not quite fair. I’ve never actually attended a fashion week (I do get invited to shows, but I always turn them down), and I’d imagine the experience is probably a pretty fun one, all things considered. I can see why people enjoy attending shows, and I’m sure it would be fascinating to see one of the big shows, live – just not quite fascinating ENOUGH to make me want to sitand write about something that ultimately just doesn’t interest me: and which I’m pretty sure doesn’t interest the majority of my readers, either.

I’ve never really been into “Fashion”, with a capital F. This is something that always surprises people, given that I have three blogs which could loosely be described as “fashion blogs”, and I’m also something of a shopaholic, who never seems to stop buying clothes and shoes. There’s a big difference between being interested in CLOTHES, and being interested in FASHION, however. To be interested in Fashion – as in, the kind of fashion you’ll see displayed at Fashion Week – you really have to be interested in what’s IN fashion. Every season, I find myself being asked by PR people to try to predict next season’s trends: a question which always leaves me stumped for an answer, because not only do I have no idea what will be in fashion next season, I don’t really care, either. It seems kind of exhausting to me to have to change your style every season, just so you can keep up with the latest trends – and I’m also pretty sure that it’s this need to be “on trend” that’s to blame for some of the more dubious styles which have become popular, just because the people who wear them feel they have to be “in fashion”.

I don’t care whether or not what I’m wearing is “fashionable”. I care whether it suits me, and I hope it looks reasonably stylish, but I’ve never seen the need to start wearing bright yellow, say, just because it’s been named the “colour of the year”, and I also can’t see myself avoiding wearing something I love, just because it’s been deemed to be no longer in style.  So I will keep on avoiding any mention of fashion week – and keep on writing about shopping and style: which are what I’m REALLY interested in.

What about you? Are you a fashion week fan, or do you avoid it like the plague?

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