What Bloggers Should Do in Lieu of NYFW This Season
It ended up being a quiet end to August for me without the usual fashion week outreach and planning, but I have to say I’m ready for a break this season. While some designers are hosting visual presentations (although finding any details about them has proven pretty tricky) and a select few designers are working on building actual sets with this year’s fashion week partner Lowe’s (!!!) it’s still a bit unclear what the purpose of showing this season really is.
I personally have not done any outreach as far as attending virtual fashion week presentations and haven’t heard much from brands either. I suspect that many of them will be taking this season off to reevaluate how they want to communicate with their customers and what types of events, presentations and campaigns make the most sense to invest time into. I’m hoping this season will allow designers to take a beat and make a new game plan for what the future of fashion week should look like.
In the meantime, here are five things you should do this year in lieu of attending fashion week shows IRL.
Check in with your fashion week brand partners
Whether the brands you typically work with during fashion week are showing or not, it might be worth checking in with them to see what they’re working on and if there’s anything you could do to help. Brands would usually be seeing an uptick in their Instagram story mentions during this week and if you can figure out if they’re launching any new products, you could do a shout out to on your stories. They’ll get a shout out which will help them out and they’ll remember that you checked in when it comes time to send out invites for IRL shows again.
Create a what I would have worn post or do a roundup of last year’s outfits
I don't know about you all, but I am in desperate need of creative and fun fashion. I’m so out of practice when it comes to putting together outfits and would love some help and guidance from fellow bloggers. That doesn’t have to mean creating new content, but instead you could do a roundup of your favorite looks from previous fashion weeks. Or if you do want to put together some new looks, film a video for TikTok or Instagram reels about what you would have worn this season.
Go through your media kit and update it
This is the perfect opportunity to dust the cobwebs off of your media kit and make sure that it’s up to date and accurate. Maybe you’ve also joined a new platform since the last time you updated it and can add those stats in as well. As brands slowly start to increase spend and ad dollars on influencers as we head into the last few months of the year you’ll be ready and prepared to pitch brands or send them a media kit when they reach out to you.
Reach out to 5 bloggers you admire and try to arrange a virtual coffee date
Since you’re not able to network as you normally would during this week, try reaching out to five bloggers that you admire and request a virtual coffee date. You can keep your message short and sweet and say, “since we’re not able to attend NYFW this year I’m reaching out to creators I admire to set up coffee chats and discuss blogging, fall trends, or anything else!” That is definitely a message I’d be excited to get from a fellow blogger as I love getting to make new friends during fashion month.
Use this time to start planning your holiday content
It’s never too early to start planning for holiday, especially this year. People will be looking for virtual ways to celebrate so start thinking about creative ways to frame your holiday content for this season. Even start by re-pinning your holiday content from last year to Pinterest so that people searching for that content might stumble upon your blog.
yours,
Austen
Photograph above by Karya Schanilec