Fashion Week Report: Pintsize Bloggers with Big Fashion Choices

By Robert Cordero
February 19, 2010

From left to right: Model Agyness Deyn and fashion blogger Tavi backstage at Alexander Wang (Photo by Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images); Tavi at Rodarte (Photo by Paul Morigi/WireImage); Tavi Gevinson interviews singer Ciara backstage at the Y-3 (Photo by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images for Y-3)

Last season, the 13-year-old blogger Tavi Gevinson made her refreshing presence felt sitting front row at many of the shows. But this season, the delightfully madcap, unabashed and remarkably self-assured style of the author of the popular blog Style Rookie has been finding its way on the runways and on the streets. Of course, most women were still teetering about the tents in their statement-making shoes and big fur coats, but imaginative sartorial arrangements of Tavi's ilk made a refreshing appearance as well.

So what did Tavi wear? A filigreed coat with half of a military panel attached to the front at Y3, a long brown skirt with a green and yellow tie dye top at Alexander Wang and a utilitarian olive coat over an inner layer of blue wool and splattered paint shoes at Rodarte. Her style is all her own—as was the blue-gray color of her hair—but she wasn't alone in exercising a brazen look that’s unspoiled from the trends that inhabit the fashion world.

While Ralph Lauren’s refined velvet tops and floral printed floor length silk dresses, weren't exactly an homage to Tavi, there were plenty of attendees at Thursday's show were working her slapdash approach to fashion. Sarah Lerfel, the buyer from the French emporium of cool, Colette, sported Alexander Wang creepers, an A-line skirt, and a plaid sweater over an appliquéd t-shirt. A man in the audience with disheveled hair, an outsize fur coat and bright red vinyl shoes received some welcome stares. And an attendee in a long plaid skirt, thick stockings underneath Chanel pumps and a long oversize wool coat that looked too big on her caught the attention of Olga Zaretskaya, the Editor-in-Chief of the Russian edition of Marie Claire, who was sitting front row. "She’s probably not tall enough to wear all that, but it’s nice to see," chuckled Zeratskaya who was surprised that New York Fashion Week produced such safe clothes this season. “I’ve seen very casual and very commercial clothes," she remarked of the last week. "At the European shows, its definitely more decorative, and to me that’s fashion."

Clockwise from top left: Sarah Lerfel of Colette and Jefferson Hack at the VPL By Victoria Bartlett (Photo by Dario Cantatore/Getty Images); Rodarte (Photo by Chris Moore/Catwalking/Getty Images); Proenza Schouler (Photo by Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images); Jeremy Scott (Photo by Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images)

Among the sea of conservative chicness noted by Zaretskaya, there were some notably imaginative offerings: Proenza Schouler’s collection, one usually geared for young, well-moneyed sophisticates, took an an ironic turn, with babydoll dresses tweaked to reveal side cut-outs and paired with thigh-highs. Justin Timberlake and Trace Ayala’s William Rast had numerous military coats that came with large panels of cape-like fabric. Alexandre Herchcovitch’s mix of wild prints and textures; Jeremy Scott's exaggerated silhouettes of women attached to models' belts; and Chris Benz's unexpected mix of embroidery, plaid, and floral prints in one outfit all ran counter to the straightforward offerings sent down the runway. But if there was one label that surely Tavi swoon, it's Rodarte, whose amalgam of vintage lace, velvets, nubby wool, and floral printed silks had a patchwork, dreamy feel that was a welcome counterpoint to everything buttoned up.