Tuesday 22 September 2009

Small but perfectly informed

Anna Wintour, fearsome editor of Vogue magazine, should be looking nervously over her shoulder right now. Because there's a thirteen year-old girl creeping up behind her, and she's not here to sell girl scout cookies.

This gawky, weird-looking 13 year-old is currently being touted as this season's fashion must-have, thanks to her hugely successful fashion blog 'Style Rookie'. While most of her contemporaries are still writing odes to their teddy bears and colour-coding the contents of their pencil case, Tavi Gevinson is sharing her opinions on what's hot and what's not. And the fashion world, never the easiest clique to penetrate, is sitting up and taking notice.

Looking like the dorky best friend in the flashback scenes of your standard chick flick, this curiously self-possessed tween has been spending the last few days gracing the front row of New York Fashion Week. It doesn't seem to matter that her bold fashion ensembles remind most people of a child raiding her mother's closet while her parents are out, she's scoring over 1.5 million hits a month and counting.

Although some of her posts show an awareness beyond her years, not all of them are well composed thought-pieces. Her review of Marc Jacobs' Monday night show read:

MAAAAAAARRRRRRRCCCCCCCC
What. an. insane. night.
Like I said before, the real review in which I articulate will be at my Pop blog, but for now?
KJWRHGAROIGREIYT598YTUREIGJFVKDSNVLKFDSNVKJFDHKDFNBLKFD

Similarly, much of the extensive photography that features on her blog resembles the kind of images usually captured when the lens cap is accidentally left off and the camera gets sat on.

Nonetheless, she's bold, confident and successful, even if she still needs to ask for a grown-up's help when using scissors. And I can't help but have a grudging respect for any teenager willing to leave the house looking like an Amish child with a pair of superhero's underpants stuck to her head.

If anyone's going to lead the way in fashion industry, it may as well be a pencil-thin 13 year-old. After all, she's one of the few people left who'd be able to fit into any of the fashion houses' increasingly unrealistic samples.

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