Post from Bobble Bee:

We live in a moment in which fashion press is being into the fray quite a lot. Starting with us fashion bloggers and our right or not right to attend shows, our ability to talk about them or even to criticize what we like or don’t in the fashion industry.
The war with the press and the dress shows seems like a new subject, but as everything in this world, nothing is new under the sun.
A couple of days ago I finished the amazing autobiography of one of the greatest designers of the XX century, Elsa Schiaparelly, tittled Shocking Life. After World War II the Syndicat de la Couture in Paris drawn up a series of regulations for the fashion industry in order to gain more money for the designers and more security for their creations. Unfortunately some of those changes involved the lack of freedom in fashion press…

” [...] The Press -the ever-democratic press, which is the one that really counts – is no longer allowed to take photographs during a show. When at last photographs can be taken they cannot be published for nearly a month. Imagine how stale the news has become by then. Movies and television cameras are also banned at dress shows, thus not merely robbing us of the spontaneous publicity we used to enjoy, but leaving the stage clear for any financial or preconceived scheme that some unscrupulous set of people might devise “
(Shocking Life, The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli – V&A edition pages 167-169)

This book was published in 1954 and back then the battle of free press or not in dress shows was already alive.
It has been very interesting for me to know the opinion of one of the most intelligent person in the fashion world of all times, and knowing that she was all down for free press in fashion shows.

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