Celebrity Style and Culture

The best way to keep up with current fashion trends? Celebrities.

I credit my years of buying tabloid magazines for a very large portion of my fashion sense. I bought US Weekly and InTouch regularly - I found them to be much more informative than magazines like Vogue or Instyle. Before you burn me at the stake for saying such a thing, let me explain! The Tabloid magazines I bought were mostly photos, and I have always loved looking at photos of beautiful women. I have especially always loved looking at photos of (what I consider) beautiful women in beautiful fashion. I study them. Their faces, their hair, and of course their clothes. I didn't know it at the time, but I was, in a way, educating myself on fashion simply by studying photos of celebrities in magazines. 

Celebrity culture in and of itself is such a strange thing. Why do we look up to these people so much? Why do we value their input and style choices to the point of, for some, an obsession? Why do some celebrities end up having a cult following where "fans" will buy anything and do anything to look like them? There are millions of people with 100x the talent clawing their way into the fashion world, many who will never get their big break. Today it's more common for a celebrity to have a fashion line than not. Why? It comes down to two things:

1. Money.

How many of the fashion lines that celebrities launch actually come from their talent? I would be willing to bet very few. (Except for J-Lo of course. J-lo is the queen of the world - although I don't care for her clothing.) Their "talent" is the people they pay to create their fashion lines, and it's always been a bit of a hot button issue for me.

The second thing it comes down to, which is the most important thing in today's world of TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook....

2. Marketing. 

Marketing is everything. No matter what you're pedaling, if you don't market it well you will never sell it. Someone selling a .99 necklace from Temu who marks it up 100X and markets it well - packaging, colors, etc., - vs. someone who spends thousands of dollars on quality materials, went to school to be a master jewelry designer and spends hours creating exquisite pieces but doesn't market their product well? The .99 necklace will win every time. J-lo may be Queen, but marketing is KING. (Pop-up thought: Why is King better than Queen?) 

Now, enjoy looking through photos of my favorite celebrity style. Both from my decade and the current decade - which are close to being on in the same. 

Cheers!