Fashion Week season will soon be upon us with the Men’s shows in Milan and Paris, followed by the Couture shows in Paris and then the Ready-to-Wear collections soon after that. I am excited to see how designers take two of the new themes from last season — technology and the future, as explored by Husein Chalayan and by Nicolas Ghesquiere for Balenciaga, and an eighties revival a la Herve Leger as pioneered by Proenza Schouler in New York and Christopher Kane in London — and push them even further. That whole pretty girl in a pretty dress thing was getting a bit old, so it was good to have some new ideas injected into the mix.

Beyond the parties, glamour, paparazzi and celebrities, Fashion Week actually plays a critical role in the Fashion industry. Once upon a time, it was the time for buyers to choose and pick what styles they wanted to feature in their stores. But today, with the advent of the "pre-collection" which account for 60%+ of the season’s sales, Fashion Week now is mostly about brand and profile building. What better way for a young designer to get their name and signature known than in front of the photographers, press and buyers of the world who assemble twice each year in the world’s fashion capitals? These photos are beamed around the world — and the more creative, provocative and different your show is, the more likely Suzy Menkes will talk about in her highly respected reviews in the Herald-Tribune. The more you have tapped into the zeitgeist of what the consumer wants, the more likely it is that Julie Gilhart will snap up your collection for Barneys New York, one of America’s premier luxury department stores.

Just for the sake of some good old fashion reminiscing, here’s a look back at the Paris shows for S/S 2007 from Style.com, including my highlight of last season, the Alexander McQueen show that took place at a Circus in the round.

Women’s Wear Daily today has a detailed Memo Pad section dedicated to fashion and celebrity blogging, covering the whole span of the fashion blogosphere from likes of Perez Hilton to the the blogs we may begin to see from more respected journalists such as Suzy Menkes of the IHT and Cathy Horyn of the NYT, due to increasing pressure from publishers that they jump on the blogging bandwagon.

Forget about all the parties that he is co-hosting. Perez Hilton, AKA Mario Lavandeira, has clearly made an impact when traffic to his blog site is even being compared in the same breath to the readership of celebrity-news stalwarts like US Weekly and InTouch by a respected fashion business publication like WWD. Hilton has effectively taken the business formula of these magazines (lots of unflattering photos of celebrities, peppered with strong opinions and innuendos on their personal lives, dress sense and body-image) and made it even more powerful and relevant in the online space. It seems that the public’s thirst for celebrity gossip — even it if is communicated in a blunt and sometimes unseemly way — is never ending. Say what you want about Mr. Hilton, but his formula seems to be working and as a site commanding millions of page views a day, he will cash in richly on his work.

It’s also interesting and noteworthy that more and more big media outlets are expecting their big-name journalists to publish blogs in addition to their other work. I was speaking about this very topic to Cia Jansson, Fashion Editor of Swedish Elle at the Swiss Textiles Award ceremonies in Zurich back in November. Cia was actively taking photos and meeting people at the event to cover it for her magazine’s website, explaining to me that more and more fashion journalists are being ask to blog in addition to their core responsibilities. You can see Cia’s coverage of the Swiss Textiles Award here.

I think it is noteworthy that even big-time publishers like CondeNast, Hachette-Filipachi and others are beginning to understand the power of blogging and how younger audiences in particular can only be reached effectively using the media that these younger readers prefer. This is a trend that is just at the beginning of its development. I for one would be a regular reader of any blog that Suzy Menkes published. It could also give her some place to publish all those photos she seems to be snapping of fellow fashionistas in the front rows of all the shows. Go Suzy!

Here is more about Perez Hilton in his own words from an excerpt introduced by Geraldo Riveira.