Covering Fashion with Flair
By Joshunda Sanders

The devil might wear Prada, but most newspaper readers don’t.

That was the message that style experts had for features and fashion editors at an early bird workshop on “What to Wear” during AASFE’s 58th annual convention. So how do newspapers cover fashion with flair across race, income and age demographics?

They can do so by widening their coverage to include everything from pop culture to politics, chatting up readers and mall rats alike and, most important, remembering that if the story is fun to report, it will likely be fun to read.

Pop culture reporter Greg Morago of The Hartford Courant, lead Style reporter A. Scott Walton from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Nicole Piscopo Neal, features editor at The Palm Beach Post, explained their success stories in a panel moderated by Houston Chronicle features editor Melissa Aguilar.

Media consumers absorb an overwhelming amount of information from hundreds of TV stations, magazines and the Internet — and that puts newspapers at a disadvantage when it comes to covering fashion and style trends. Who wants to read about haute couture when you can get quick tips on saving money from Lucky Magazine?

Local coverage, Neal said, “is the only currency we have.” Though there is some coverage that fashion writers and editors have to pay attention to — like New York’s Fashion Week — not everything on a Manhattan runway will get displayed in Las Vegas or Spokane.

If readers can’t find the shirt, they can’t buy it. And if they can’t buy it, what’s the point? If fashion editors must provide national coverage, the stories should be quick and lively, with art and graphics telling most of the story.

Lively coverage on national events and trends combined with local stories that have a specific audience — what’s the latest trend for the Millennium Generation at Target, anyway? — will likely snag the attention of bargain hunters and readers.

Walton said that ideas for making fashion relevant come from a variety of places, including movies, theater and sports. Fashion “informs every aspect of life, and life informs every kind of fashion,” he said.

And with a perspective like that, there’s no way to run out of great style ideas, whether you’re writing about Louis Vuitton or Levi’s.

Joshunda Sanders is a features writer for the San Francisco Chronicle and a 2004 AASFE fellow.

TIPS ON COVERING FASHION

Here are some tips from Nicole Piscopo Neal of The Palm Beach Post:

• Remember the “local” part of “local paper.” Readers can turn to any of the 25 magazines at the checkout lines for trends. You have to work it harder and smarter than that. That means fashion editors should do the reporting and tell people things they want or need to know about local shopping.
• Remember to ask yourself: Is it useful? Is it engaging? Is it imparting information that cannot be found easily elsewhere? Ideally, all three questions should get a “yes.”
• Remember to take a concept to the next level. It takes a lot more work, but it makes for a much better package. Take every idea and ask if there’s one more twist that can be made to give an added layer. The answer is always “yes.”
• Forget the traditional story form 80 percent of the time for most fashion editors, 60 percent of the time for even the really good writers. That sounds brutal, but it’s true. Narrative plus fashion usually equals bad. Let art tell the story and use cutlines and blurbs to impart information that isn’t obvious.
• Forget fashionese. “Fabrication.” “Hue.” “Palette.” “Important Pieces for Fall.” When your fashion editor starts talking like an Insider, they’ve lost perspective.
• Forget taking yourself too seriously. Let Sports Illustrated do their swimsuit issue in exciting parts of the world. You can go to exciting parts of the COUNTY!