Day 3: What do you see?

Imagine that you are a naïve reader who just stumbles upon the Style Rookie blog as I have once. You know nothing about fashion besides what people wear on the T. If you are not from the U.S., you also don’t know much about old movies, children’s books and other American culture things. With that in mind, try reading Tavi’s blog.

Start with the last post titled Sleepy and Hollow. Here you have five images.

1.       A girl I have never seen in my life with a caption which should probably mean something. 

2.       A doll with suspiciously red eyes and presumably a fashionable outfit. 

3.       A random (?) boy next to a fake Christmas tree.  

4.       Here I might guess something. It might be an ad or a magazine cover judging by the unfamiliar Italian looking word and model’s black lipstick.

5.       This one I know. Chloe Sevigny. A model, right?

Um… How does this all come together and is it really supposed to mean something? Apparently it does make sense to a significant amount of people, judging by 85 somewhat informed comments inspired by the post.

The good news is that the blogger must have anticipated potential confusion. The very bottom of the post has 5 words which seem to be the captions to the pictures. From them I found out:

1.       The girl is Maureen McCormick, a character in the 1970s show The Brady Bunch called Marcia Brady. Marcia became a fashion designer.

2.       This is not just a creepy doll. This is Blythe, a fashion doll from the 1970s. In 2001 it was recreated by a Japanese company. Now the Blythe enthusiasts make fashion collections for them.

3.       As I thought, a random boy. The picture comes from Flickr and is titled “Christmas, 1969.”

4.       Missoni is a fashion house based in Varese, Italy (good guess). And the peak of its popularity was in the 1970.

5.       Chloe. Model, actress and a fashion designer, born in the 1970.

So, now I get it. The post is about fashion in the 1970s. Who would have known?

Marshall McLuhan could put this in “Understanding Media.” Blog environment is not linear or one-dimensional. It lets the reader explore and wander away from the author’s page. It gives him or her full control of the process of information gathering. One could glance over the post, while the other could dive into its depth, follow links to someone’s Tumblr or Flickr, or get lost in Wikipedia trying to make sense of the message. There is also an option to start a discussion in the comments to make it even more interactive, not only with the medium itself but with other users. How "cool" is that?

The ability of a blog platform to link things allowed the whole new type of writing - very short and extremely customizable. The medium indeed became the message.  

Nothing like the printed page, is it?