Constant Comment

Yesterday, Coco made a list of the things she is thankful for. What a great way to remind yourself of how good you've got it, even if you're in the midst of a mess or just having a difficult day. My life has been disaster free, and my days are only difficult if I make them so. That is, I've got a horrible habit of putting a negative spin on everything. I've got a critical eye that's always criticizing, and a nasty train of thought that always ends up at the worst case scenario. I'm working on it, I promise.

I was especially reminded of how critical I can be, how critical all of us can be, by the explosion of dialogue over at What I Wore. It looks like Ms. Schroeder has since turned her comments off, but yesterday afternoon there were almost 200! Craziness. I'm not a big blog commenter in general, but I follow her blog and this whole situation got me thinking about fashion and blogging and I decided, against my better judgment, to leave my two cents. A snippet of my comment, which probably went unnoticed, but that I hoped would counter or at least balance out the many irrational displays of contempt between Ms. Schroeder and her commenters:

I think we all want to be in this together, but I also think that criticism is a huge part of fashion, as it is of other art forms, because it helps move us all forward. I think we want to believe that fashion has no rules, but we've all got our own set of them, and can usually call someone else out for breaking one of them.

When I was thinking about what to write, I also wanted to find a way to mention that so many of us really internalize our personal style, and so criticism of it, constructive or not, usually feels like someone just stabbed us in the gut. And on the other side of it, when we see someone who's wearing something we wouldn't wear, we react with such disgust and shock you'd think some creeper just showed us their privates!

I think as fashion bloggers, we should save our criticism of other bloggers for drinks with our friends and keep it off the record. And if we want to critique designers and professional stylists, we should be sure to read religiously and take cues from Cathy Horyn of the New York Times. Criticism is essential to fashion, but it must also be thoughtful, respectful, and justified.