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Forgive the fact that in two years’ time this will surely sound like garbage (or whatever word we’re using for “bad” two years from now), but it is not yet time for Vine celebrities to be fashion people.
This past weekend, the top image on the Wall Street Journal’s style section was Vine star Cameron Dallas, along with an article that detailed his recent fashion achievements, such as modeling for Calvin Klein, sitting front row at Dolce & Gabbana’s men’s fashion presentation in Milan last summer, and attending a private dinner at Chateau Marmont hosted by Louis Vuitton. It also informed the public that “Dallas” is, in fact, his actual last name.
And on Wednesday, Dallas revealed on the The Late Late Show with James Corden that he would be opening Dolce & Gabbana’s fall 2017 menswear show not as a guest, but as a model. In a fashion world that’s constantly changing, a Vine star on the runway still feels like a first (even as Vine itself slips away).
It’s easy to draw comparisons to almost a decade ago, when a generation of fashionable women and men were gaining fame not on the mastheads of major magazines or by landing modeling contracts, but by posting pictures of themselves wearing outfits on blogs.
That internet shift — that saw the rise of Bryanboy and Tavi, among others — is somehow still causing drama to this day. (Back in September, Vogue deemed bloggers “sad,” “ridiculous,” and “embarrassing,” to which bloggers replied by pointing out that the magazine’s criticism is more about its anxiety that the elite fashion circle is widening.)
But there is an important difference between aspiring fashion writers, photographers, and models who rose in the fashion blogosphere and the people who’ve gained fame by being simultaneously funny and cute on Vine: The bloggers care deeply about fashion.
To be fair, we can’t be 100 percent sure that Cameron Dallas — who is totally cute and funny and I would totally trade skin softness with him! — doesn’t. But, like...
When asked what he does for a living, he looked momentarily blank. “My interests are vast,” he finally replied. “I think I’m just an entrepreneur. I do the Instagram thing. I like music. Now I want to learn about the fashion space.”
I don’t know. Would you buy a tie this guy is selling? Or a nice camel coat?
Just give me a year to process this, okay? A year. In 2018, you have no idea how fast I will run to buy the Cameron Dallas x Nash Grier x someone named Cody, probably x Supreme collab. Seriously. Just not yet.