NY Mag's Short Lived Trends: Back off My Balenciaga

Blink and you missed it indeed. Having your pic snapped for street style during fashion week is kind of like blowing a dandelion into the wind--those style seeds are gone to the four corners of the earth, my friend, and god only knows in what magazine or online manifestation and de-then-recontextualized circumstance they will resurface to haunt or delight you months after the fact.

Case in point: somehow, a pic of me from NYFW made it into New York Magazine's decade-end trend roundup: "Thirty-five short-lived looks from an attention-deficient decade."

I must say, NYMAG, you are way off base with this one. Amongst the RIP short lived trends of the decade, they have listed: logo bags, face hiding sunglasses, skinny jeans and BIRKINS. BIRKINS? Are they barking? Sure crocs for all ages should fade quickly and painlessly into a grimacing noughties dusty fashion yearbook not ever to be reviewed again, but the Birkin? I know we're bucking the luxury trend and New Yorkers sometimes have their heads so far up in the tightly wound regions where the sun-don't-shine in attempt to affect a sort of too-cool-for-school-and-that-means-anything-mainstream. To that I have two retorts: 1) just because Victoria Beckham may have a collection of Birkin's tipping the scale at $2m, doesn't mean its a "trend" of the post-Spice decade. It merely means that a former wag is trying to Grace Kelly-ify herself by reviving a surefire thing, not that the classic glory of the world's most iconic and timeless accessory has fallen by the wayside of an ADD generation. And 2) It is precisely this attitude, this flippant disregard for all walks of the fashion industry--from Uggs to Louboutins--that is poisoning the industry, particularly the retail sector. We can't, on the one hand, with projects like Fashion's Night Out, come down on the consumer for protecting their pennies at home, but then come out with lengthy editorials like this which put down nearly everything worth buying on the market. From cheap trend update like black nail polish to major investment purchases, such as a Chanel suit, this article poo poos them all. So what are we supposed to spend our money on then, NY MAG?

Yours truly, with her bulging Balenciaga, is a stand-in for the biker bag, to which they assigned the shelf life of 2002-7. That was a sound investment, and I stand by it. Sounder than anything trading on the NYSE, if you ask me.

On annoyed reader put it best when he commented: "When are you guys going to give up publishing this kind of pointless list of pointless things that may or may not be correct? 99% of people, even in New York didn't notice and still don't care." By saxon212 on 12/08/2009 at 7:21pm.

Click here to read the NY MAG article