Paris, NYC, and Beijing fashion weeks, the Benetton shooting in NYC, the multitude of fashion parties in Beijing…I’ve been to a number of fashion events over the last year, but none were as enjoyable as the last couple days in Florence. LUISAVIAROMA has been a great host, but it is not just owing to them. I think the main factors are the city itself and the particular mix of bloggers attending.
That there is no need for mass transit, taxis or cars in central Florence makes things immensely more pleasant. The future of small events like this and major conventions should be in manageably-sized, but still cosmopolitan cities like this. Walks down the pedestrian-only streets of Florence yield new treasures in the form of shops, cafes, and people-watching every time. I don’t think I have ever been in a city where the streets are more crowded. If only cities in the US and China, where many avenues are surprisingly empty of foot traffic, imitated high density European urban cores rather than using the enticing but hopefully moribund auto city as a model.
As important as the city is the mix of people at this event. It’s a surprisingly unpretentious crowd. Now, I have no problem with amusing pretensions – knee-jerk anti-pretentious people are as irritating as those whom they criticize – when they are of the eccentric or more professorial variety. The pretensions that bother me are the shallow, ignorant, and mysteriously elitist variety one finds in the fashion industry. Those types have been thankfully absent from this event. Perhaps it is the nature of bloggers or the fact that many of them are European. Americans do have that reputation for being less than genuine in all of their profusiveness whereas Asians are trained from birth to not show their emotions (yes, yes, yes, there are countless exceptions to these generalizations in your life and mine). Or maybe – crazy notion – the grass is just greener. Anyway, I’ve been having some very valuable conversions about the business of blogging, the challenge of handing advertorial, and the direction of media in general. I’ve learned a lot over the last couple days.
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