The inventor of the word 'fashionista' has apologised — 20 years after coining the term.
In 1993, author Stephen Fried wrote a biography of the late Gia Carangi, Thing Of Beauty: The Tragedy Of Supermodel Gia, in which he used the word four times, apparently as a play on the word 'Sandanista'.
"I created it because as I was writing about the fashion industry — and young model Gia Carangi's immersion in it — there was no simple way to refer to all the people at a sitting for a magazine photo or a print ad," he writes in The Atlantic today. "I got tired of listing photographers, fashion editors, art directors, hairstylists, makeup artists, all their assistants, and models as the small army of people who descended on the scene. This was also the group that, according to one top fashion illustrator I interviewed, had collectively become 'the famous non-famous people' at Studio 54."
Now, with the statute of literary limitations well and truly expired, Fried has apologised to "all users of language for my crime against nomenclature", and to his wife, who "lobbied loudly against the word when I invented it".
Indeed, although the word has since been added to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), it wasn't an instant hit. The first review of the book, by author Carol Kramer in the New York Times Sunday Book Review, criticised Fried for his use of the invented term, saying "he makes up corny labels, too".
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Fried writes that a Lexis/Nexis search showed the word was then used 3 times in 1994, 26 times in 1995, 54 times in 1996 and 74 times in 1997. In 1998, the year HBO made a movie about Gia's life starring a young (and naked) Angelina Jolie, the word was used more than 200 times in US newspapers.
The next year, it was added to the OED, and Donatella Versace was quoted as saying, "I am a fashionista and proud of it". Most recently ("and annoyingly", a contrite Fried writes), it was used in a series of TJ Maxx commercials.
If you're wondering, the OED defines a 'fashionista' as "a person employed in the creation or promotion of high fashion, such as a designer, photographer, model, fashion writer, etc. Also: a devotee of the fashion industry; a wearer of high-fashion clothing."
Grudgingly, Fried admits that, as a fashion writer, he is defined as a fashionista. "Although," he writes, "if you saw me sitting here in my unfashionable office wearing the same t-shirt and jeans for the second day in a row, I doubt that's the first word that would come to mind."
Via The Atlantic
