This is an edited excerpt of my conversation with fashion critic Rachel Tashjian. You can watch or listen to the full episode on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts. Follow the show so you don’t miss a single episode and please leave a rating and a review, which is the best way you can support the show right now.
Earlier in Back Row:
I wanted Rachel Tashjian to stop by Back Row before the spring 2026 show season, but she was busy — first, doing a Substack experiment for the Washington Post, where she was working as fashion critic, publishing reviews here in order to meet her audience in a new way. Rachel has been finding new ways to meet her audience since launching her Opulent Tips newsletter in the 2010s. I did not know at the time that she was also planning her next career move — to CNN, where she’s now senior style reporter.
Tashjian decided to take the job in order to meet her audience in video. “How has a big news organization not seized on fashion commentary and fashion news through video and social media?” she said.
In our conversation for the Back Row podcast, recorded right around the time she started the job, we discussed the broad landscape of fashion media, which is undergoing a power shift as independent creators enjoy a larger share of online attention, while the Fashion Establishment struggles to get on board.
This past show season you and I both heard from fashion people who were generally dissatisfied – if not disgusted – by the way fashion is talked about on social media, and who gets attention for it. What did you hear when you were going to the shows?
Edward Buchanan, who was one of the first designers at Bottega Veneta and is a big character in Robin Givhan’s book about Virgil Abloh, posted a note on Instagram saying – I’m paraphrasing – designers take so much time to create these collections, and a lot of the comments are just too mean and dismissive. A lot of people at shows were like, “Did you see what Edward said? What did you think?”
At first it was very positive, but then — this always happens — you get the day two or three backlash. People were sort of coming into the comments and saying, “You can’t dictate who can and cannot talk about fashion.” I saw that cropping up again and again. I saw a lot of comments and a lot of posts about whether or not Jonathan Anderson, for example, has forgotten or written off the Dior client, and again, I saw that sort of commentary crop up with Chanel.
There’s a post-stan culture way of commenting on pop culture. Even if you look at the way that the new Taylor Swift album [was discussed]. I saw so much more commentary, and argument about what this album is and what it means and how it’s a referendum on her celebrity in general. I’ve heard none of the songs.
People were less eager to discuss and dissect the collections — there was so much commentary on who gets to talk about fashion and why.
Does Anna Wintour still matter? Or Chloe Malle? I still don’t know if I’m supposed to be asking this question about Anna or Chloe.
I think that we have to wait to see what Chloe’s Vogue looks like. She said her first issue was sometime next year.
I will say the idea of making Vogue smaller, more personal, potentially more eccentric — that seems like it has a lot of potential. To me, the question of whether or not Vogue and Anna and Chloe and all of that still matters is a fascinating one because if you look at the comments anytime a Vogue cover comes out, there’s such a strong reaction to whether or not this is Vogue or not.
Over the summer (and even this fall to a degree), I felt like I heard about a Condé Nast photo shoot every day, like the Travis Kelce GQ story. Vogue did the Lauren Sánchez wedding cover, which was controversial, but everyone was talking about it, particularly how she didn’t belong on Vogue. But I think the industry still cares about being in Vogue.
I think it might matter even more, because there’s so much change happening in the fashion industry. You don’t have a Karl Lagerfeld to latch onto. There aren’t really celebrity designers maybe at the moment, and so someone who had this incredible longevity becomes even more relevant as the interpreter of what’s happening. I thought that the Tyler Mitchell covers of Ayo Edeberi and Greta Lee were amazing.
How do you think AI will affect the industry? AI is coming in a big way to fashion. It gives you a “perfect” person to put in your photo shoots. We’ve seen brands like Etro and Moncler experiment with AI-generated people in ad campaigns and people were fine with that. When Levi’s did this, people were upset about it, but those high fashion ones just sort of came and went. My friends who work on ad campaigns at creative agencies tell me that AI saves a lot of money and it’s coming. And fashion is looking for idealized versions of humans anyway – they’re not interested in real people
There’s no reason for a brand like Abercrombie or American Eagle to use a real person unless they’re going to use Sydney Sweeney. But the majority of images that are taken by Shein or Target or Forever 21 – those images don’t need to be of real people.
Do you think that creators are going to be replaced by AI? I saw someone saying on Threads, which I’m on more and more, that now that we’ve learned to be creators, creators are just going to be replaced by AI slop creators.
If you’re just watching AI generated commentary, what are you actually learning? At a certain point, it becomes a snake eating its own tail because if there isn’t human creation of journalism and commentary, then what is the AI pulling from?
Where do you think fashion media will be in 10 years? Will Vogue still have covers? Will we be AI slop versions of ourselves on Instagram?
I think it’s possible that magazines will just be covers and nothing inside. I do think that those covers and images, when they’re good, really matter to people.
What I really was struggling with this season is that these brands are asking everyone to pay attention to these fashion shows. They invite a million celebrities, and of course so much content comes out fashion brands in general, and then a lot of these comments like, “This looks like Zara,” or, “This is ugly.” And you see industry insiders pushing back on that. I saw Alex Fury, for example, responding to these comments, like, “I’m looking at the Chanel in person right now. I’m holding the tweed in my hand, and what you’re saying is completely wrong.”
But then the clothing is so exceedingly expensive. I was looking at the Versace trunk show [of Dario Vitale’s debut collection] on Moda Operandi. They’re selling dresses that are $26,000.
Oh my God. I don’t even remember the dresses at this point.
Fashion brands want us all to pay attention, but then the products are completely inaccessible. What is it that they’re asking from us? Do they just want our attention and adulation? And then when people are offering these comments that are like, “This is so ugly, this is dumb, I was underwhelmed by this,” I think part of that is in some cases warranted hostility that you’re asking me to pay attention to this and you’re offering me nothing.
I was really disappointed by the Versace pre-order thing in particular. I looked at it, and I was like, Cool, this is stuff for 25-year-olds to buy, and it’ll be less expensive than Prada. But no, it’s more expensive than Prada.
I thought that what the brands wanted from aspirational shoppers was to buy the lipsticks and the eyeshadows and then save up for a bag. Do you think that that’s what they want?
Wasn’t the Louis Vuitton lipstick over $100?
It was $160. But that is not $26,000. You’d probably wear it more times than the dress. Maybe someone should buy that dress and wear it until it meets its value just every single day.
A dollar a day for 26,000 days straight.
Check out the full podcast episode on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts, and follow Rachel on Instagram and TikTok.
