Fashion’s Night Out… in the Philly suburbs?
King of Prussia Mall, from above
OK, we are indeed a Philadelphia style blog, so I would be remiss not to mention the fact that tonight is the Fashion’s Night Out in King of Prussia. There’s events and trunk shows, all of which you can check out on their website.
However, I’ve (obviously) always kind of disliked the type of fashion stuff in which Philly just tries to parrot New York, because it always seems so completely false. By attempting to do fashion the way New York, the richest, most ridiculous city in the world, does, Philly pretty much ensures that the best it will ever accomplish will be tagging along and nurturing a permanent inferiority complex.
(This is why I haven’t written a ton about the nascent Philly Fashion Week, which will happen October 10-12; rather, that plus the fact that they haven’t been super specific about a lot of things yet, it may become more interesting as more information is posted.)
But the Fashion’s Night Out thing at King of Prussia is exactly what I dislike about this thing with Philly grasping at New York’s coattails. It’s something that started up with Vogue and the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and even then the whole thing is pretty much a desperate “Please! Consume our products! Oh god, we’re dying here!”
I can kind of understand why they feel the need to guilt consumers into injecting liquidity into the fashion industry of New York: it’s a huge business there, and New York is the source of a ton of fashion innovation. But when it ends up at the department stores of an enormous, town-sized mall in the Philadelphia suburbs, it just starts to seem… kind of embarrassing. Come hang out at the mall! It’ll be open until 11 p.m.! The wince-worthy copy doesn’t help:
With all this fun, you won’t want to show up solo. Teens can get down at their own party space featuring rockin’ live entertainment.
And neither does the fact that one of the attractions they’re offering is custom Uggs embellishments, christ.
I’ll be doing a post about Philly Fashion Week as it gets closer, so perhaps I can articulate my feelings on this a bit better. But… yeah, I probably won’t be heading out to King of Prussia anytime soon.
Emily, lighten up you’re a “fashion” blogger. I can just imagine you now, as you hover over your MAC PRO, in your hipster-esque sheep clothing in your Fish Town apartment, writing this post against the suburban world and it makes me feel sorry for you. Like I said, lighten up! Fashion’s Night Out was a GLOBAL celebration (not just NYC) to help people have fun with fashion and shopping again. If you had taken the time to actually come out to KoP Mall and be a true journalist you would have seen that the evening was so much more than what you described. Yes, there was Ugg Studding but there was also amazing DJs, a really cool eyelash bar and apparel that supported the September 11th Memorial Fund. But what was most poignant about Fashion’s Night Out at the KoP Mall was that people were walking around with smiles on their faces and truly ENJOYING themselves- something I feel you could do a little more of.
Disagree with my opinions all you want, but let’s please not confuse “journalism” with “going to a marketing event at the mall.” And let’s not confuse either of those with “what we generally do here on the style blog.” And why do you think you know where I live, how I dress or what computer I can afford?
Why blog about Philly fashion if you’re too good for it? Maybe time to move on?
You got me! I hereby quit!
All I’m saying, and I don’t think this is really a point of contention, is that Philly realistically doesn’t have the resources to hang with New York when it comes to New York runway-type fashion. OK? There is nowhere else in America that can bring New York’s combination of fashion + people with ridiculous amounts of money to purchase it, and if you take my stating that as “she thinks she’s too good for Philly,” you’re mishearing me.
I regard it as a good thing that Philly’s scene doesn’t mostly consist of runway fashion that’s out of the reach of all but the incredibly wealthy, and I try to feature local places and makers of things that embody what I like about our city’s style. When I get inundated with PR stuff and a million other blog posts seemingly written right off the press release about how totally Philly style some event is when it’s mostly a bunch of department stores and national brands selling the same stuff they always do, just later at night and with a DJ, I can get cranky.
Christ, clearly I’m cranky, because I’ve spent like fifteen minutes composing this response. So I’m just gonna put this down as my response to all further accusations of being a big fun-hating, too-good-for-Philly Fish Town bitch, cuz I got things to do.
I’m always interested in local Philly events, but let me say that no matter where I live, you won’t catch me lining up for Ugg embellishments any time soon.
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