From Paper to Screens: The Shift From Magazines to Influencers

By Carlos Mesa

Before you could go on Pinterest, search for “cute outfit ideas for dinner,” and immediately find the perfect outfit to go out with your friends, if you wanted ideas for new additions to your closet, you would go and buy the new edition of Vogue, ELLE, or whatever you were into, and serendipitously flip through the pages, marking each page that had something interesting. 

But now, style is served to you on a silver platter. Brands began feeding designs to consumers through social media in the early 2010s when visual-based social media sites like Instagram began popping up. But fashion’s democratization began earlier, in the late 2000s through fashion blogs, where people followed creators with small followings for outfit inspiration.  

Now, with platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and more, you don’t have to wait a month to  catch up on the freshest fashion trends; you can open an app, and suddenly, the world is your oyster. As influencers took control of the fashion industry, trends began moving quicker, people got bored faster, and the pressure to push out as much clothing as retailers could  to keep up with grew exponentially.

People felt more in control of their wardrobe. Many people prefer to trust another human being they can see wearing the advertised piece. It created a sense of independence from mega luxury brands and drew attention to smaller designers. Others feel that fashion influencers are prone to lying for profit from their sponsors, and would rather get fashion advice from researched fashion journalists and stylists.

“I believe that getting it from social media rather than magazines, it kinda loses its individually because social media is designed to feed onto trends and stuff, and most trends are from social media, so everyone just kind of looks the same instead, y’know, of having a sense of individuality and difference and diversity,” said freshman Salome Garcia.

This drastic change in the fashion industry deeply affected how trends exist, their lifespans, and their magnitude. Rather than being controlled by luxury fashion houses, trends are controlled by personalized algorithms that push and repress videos at will. 

The average life of a modern trend typically occurs something like this: a celebrity or influencer makes a video on it, people rush to replicate it, brands begin to mass-produce it to keep up with demand, then when it becomes “normal,” the trend dies, and the cycle repeats. This vicious cycle is fueled by a groupthink mentality and a collective desire to fit in, which is promoted in online spaces.

In the midst of this process, fast fashion emerges. Coined in the late 1980s, this term refers to unsustainable and unethical business practices used to keep up with the increasingly short lifespans of trends and micro-trends. When a trend arises, a brand must rush the whole design and production process to maximize the amount of profit they can earn from it. 

One aspect of this is the production of items of clothing using synthetic fibers. These synthetic fibers, such as polyester, are major pollutants and contributors to carbon emissions. Due to the low quality of these textiles, they wear down more quickly, forcing consumers to purchase clothes more often, creating more demand for companies to fill. 

Another point to bring up is the appearance of online shopping platforms. Where consumers would’ve previously had to schedule specific dates to go clothes shopping, go to a retailer, and try on the clothes, people can now add stuff to an online shopping cart and have a whole outfit shipped to their doorstep.

Because the task of having to physically travel to a store to buy clothes has been nearly erased, people have begun to haphazardly order clothes online whenever they see something they like, and may simply return it if they do not like it, or if it doesn’t fit properly. This is what turned malls into hang-out spots rather than centers of commercial activity. It is now not only easier to grow bored of your closet, but also to completely overhaul it in the span of a couple  of days.

Magazines, however, due to their tendency to cater to fashion giants, can sometimes be repetitive and biased in their content. When examining the trustworthiness of a magazine, it has to be noted that fashion journalists are blackballed, bribed, and even threatened into refraining from criticizing large fashion houses. 

“I think social media has a bit more variety as to what styles might suit certain body types, because I feel like magazines only cater to a certain demographic of people. Compared to social media, where there’s a bunch of different people who have different styles and different features or things that they like. And I feel like a lot of people get more inspiration from that rather than like magazines,” said senior Alicia Brown.

With the industry controlled by the people who actually wear the clothes, people find it easier to encounter clothes that help them express themselves. Subcultures that previously were on the verge of non-existence suddenly gained traction by building online communities, and whole new subcultures were formed. 

To stay afloat, magazine publishers, rather than fighting the current of online fashion gurus, are deciding to go with the flow by adopting a habit of prioritizing long-form editorials to make a profit from the growing desire to escape “doom-scrolling,” capitalizing on professional social media accounts, and even hiring fashion influencers as models. 

Regardless of the changes it brings, social media fashion advertising is here to stay, and it’s already made its home in everyone’s scroll feed. The real question is: Can magazines keep up, or are they inevitably becoming of the past?