Just let her be.
Tavi’s story more or less breaks down to “teenage girl has popular blog, world-at-large notices.” How many teenagers have similar blogs? Probably all of them. The only difference is that the people that populate the adult world of her niche have noticed her. Good for her, but what she’s doing doesn’t seem all that different than what other teenagers with blogs do (including the picture overload of “stuff I like today”).
Did you guys read her blog post about the Terry Richardson scandal?
http://www.thestylerookie.com/2010/05/few-observations.html
This girl has got a great head on her shoulders.
That’s actually a really good post, GovernmentMan.
It’s rambly and ungrammatical, but I like her point. Though I’d rather read Amy Klein when it comes to topics like that.
Tarwater I don’t think having read or not read Sassy is in anyway relevant to my opinion. You’re basically saying that something or someone that draws on their pre-birth past can’t have any cultural relevance, or that ground covered before can’t or shouldn’t be again. That whole idea of “it’s been done before” is nonsense, should we all hang up our easels, guitars, synthesizers, sewing machines because everything we create and everything we laud directly refers to the musty old past? Fashion, art, music, culture, it’s all cyclical.
I’m not too au fait with the fashion blog world as fashion doesn’t tend to interest me a heck of a lot. However, I know a kid with talent when I see one and kid’s got talent. I think as she matures she’ll find more and more of her own voice and might even be embarrassed by the more derivative elements of her earlier posting. Who knows, she might even become part of a paradigm that rejects that retroism for something else. It’s kinda too early to tell.
We can hope.
“I think the creepy pornographer is a creep.” Insightful.
Impossible. We must mock and deride her until she is as bitter as we are.
It’s extremely relevant. For reasons that I’ve already given.
Are guitars, easels, synthesizers, and sewing machines still culturally relevant? Yes, they are, obviously.
A more apt analogy would draw comparisons between Sassy and the pet rock. Or Sassy and the lava lamp. Would you be exclaiming this girl’s intelligence and fashion savvy if she was writing a book titled, Polyester Pants and Lava Lamps: How the Pet Rock Changed My Life, and she was doing it in earnest, not in some kind of ironic or transgressive way?
Terry Richardson is a legend, a hero, a stallion of photography. This “style rookie” is a complete hack. She writes about Richardson like he’s some wicked ogre who kidnaps young, innocent maiden models and drags them to his cave. News flash, idiot - those models work with Richardson because they want to, and because he’s good at what he does. I absolutely cannot believe she has the nerve to rail on him like this.
Especially when Jezebel and every other similar blog out there is putting out anti Terry Richardson posts every time he so much as turns around. Seems like Tavi knows the party line pretty well.
And the fact you guys keep bringing up these ad hominems indicates that you don’t have an argument.
My argument is simple: she doesn’t bring anything new. She’s praising old stuff that someone already created. She’s not even altering it. That’s not a fashion prodigy. That’s just a kid who knows what clothes she likes–something nearly every teenager does.
No one has yet to provide an argument for why the hell she is important at all. And if you can’t bring that, then you are just doing the equivalent of freaking out over the kid who can play the piano at a young age. Great, wonderful for him. What does he bring to the world of music? What does this young lady bring to the world of fashion?
If there’s a disdain here, it’s a disdain for people who become famous for not really doing anything. You want us to like this girl, it’s up to you to give us a reason. Don’t keep attacking us because we don’t agree with you.
I was prepared to be wowed by this girl’s designs. I at least expected Project Runway level stuff from her. I got a girl taking scans of a book or screenshots of a movie and saying, “I like this.”
Yeah actually I would. I think a book like that would be fascinating if well written as her blog tends to be.
I would think that picking something that’s no longer culturally relevant to be influenced by is a good thing but hey YMMV.
I expect that she is being influenced by the cultural ride she is presently taking.
13 year old girl has opinions. News at 11.
Not quite. This is a very good example from which you draw the wrong conclusion entirely.
There is only room enough in the world for a few people to make a meaningful contribution to the study of ancient Greek literature. There are high barriers to entering this subject in the first place, and the pressure to create something completely new out of material that mankind has been poring over for thousands of years is high. Some people get away with redigesting the same old pap, but they can’t get away with this until after they’ve done some serious time mastering the discipline. They are also second-rate and certainly not famous. But they did at least spend ten years or so earning the right to be second-rate. I can all but guarantee that absolutely none of them are nostalgic for the days of Demosthenes.
Tavi is an example of the opposite phenomenon. The discipline of fashion (or whatever you want to call it) self-evidently does not have high barriers to entry. The author self-evidently has not done her time. She does recycle some good ideas from 20 years ago, which by itself is no crime if perhaps unremarkable. The contrived nostalgia is more depressing. I think that Tarwater’s analysis is spot-on. It’s a shame that already a bright girl could be such a shill.
Even if we believe for a moment that what she contributes is fresh and original, perhaps this says more about the quality of the minds who devote themselves to writing about mainstream fashion than anything else.
Totally forgot about this thread. (I don’t check on here too often)
Why are you guys hating on a sweet, intelligent girl?
GovernmentMan, I actually really like Tavi, but it’s a little disingenuous to make a thread titled “what do you guys think of” her, and then get upset when people offer, well, what they think of her.
As for what I like about her - I like that her blog is written in a style that makes it fun to read and that she doesn’t just obsess over designer clothing but takes her style from vintage and thrifted and gifted clothing too. I also think her fashion posts are fun, especially when she posts her outfits alongside their inspirations.
You’re just jealous because you don’t have insightful insight like her!
