BERLIN, Germany — A big thank you to PREMIUM and Mary Scherpe of Stil in Berlin for inviting me to join an esteemed panel of German fashion experts — Christoph Amend of Zeit Magazin, Marcus Luft of Gala and  Too Posh to Push, and Sven Schoene of PR Agency K-MB — to discuss the future of fashion media on the first day of Berlin Fashion Week.

The panel began with the esteemed Suzy Menkes, who wasn’t able to participate in person, but declared via video: “The world changed when fashion instead of being a monologue, became a conversation. And that’s never going to stop.”

Suzy, of course, was amongst the first of the mainstream fashion editors to reach out to bloggers and engage them as professionals. “A good blogger,” she says, “can really take all sorts of elements and use them both in words and pictures and make a strong statement.”

She’s “tremendously in favour of anything that is new and fresh in fashion,” but the one thing that concerns her is that “some bloggers believe, in their innocence, that they are completely independent in what they say.” In between the lines, Suzy advises bloggers to be wary of the increasing pressure they receive from brands to evangelise brands and products.

The video also features Julia and Jessie from Les Mads, Jennine from The Coveted and Yvan from The Facehunter, each of whom provide their own perspectives on how quickly the fashion blogosphere is rising in influence and prevalence.

Red Herring: Gilt Groupe Scores VC Funding
The market is beginning to acknowledge the potential of online communities in selling fashion. The Red Herring is reporting that Gilt Groupe, which was featured in a Q&A on The Business of Fashion last week, has raised $5m of venture funding from Matrix Partners. Even the New York Times ran a short article.

IHT: Supreme Luxur y 2008
All week we have been posting Suzy Menkes’ videos from the IHT’s Supreme Luxury Conference in Moscow. Don’t miss the written content – it’s just as interesting, especially this article on India that somehow appears within a sea of articles on Russia.

The Wall Street Journal: MySpace for Millionaires
Asmallworld is no longer alone. A raft of new online sites targeted at high net worth individuals have emerged in the past few months, including SQUA.RE, a site we featured in an article for the JC Report.

Every 6 months during the fashion weeks held in New York, London, Milan and Paris, fashionistas grab the International Herald Tribune each morning and skip straight to the Style section to see what Suzy Menkes has said about the collections. It’s a running joke that fashion people buy the IHT, read Suzy’s reviews, and throw the rest of the newspaper out. This does not speak to the poor quality of journalism in the IHT, but rather to the high level of respect accorded to Ms. Menkes. Quite simply, there is no other fashion critic like her.

This week, Suzy is hosting the annual IHT luxury conference in Moscow, with keynote speakers like Bernard Arnault, Tom Ford and Yves Carcelle of Louis Vuitton. It’s a blockbuster event and I am very sorry to be missing it. But luckily, the IHT has created an online home for Supreme Luxury with detailed coverage of all of the ongoings, including this video interview between Suzy Menkes and Donatella Versace, who discusses the role of fabrics and minimalism in her new luxury, the role of celebrity in fashion, and the impact of professional management on the Versace business.

In what is what is likely a first in the fashion industry when it comes to the blogosphere, Marc Jacobs has joined the ongoing online debate raging about his supposed row with Suzy Menkes, the highly regarded fashion editor of the International Herald Tribune.

In his comment on Cathy Horyn’s On the Runway blog, Jacobs says:

I did NOT stick my tongue out at Suzy Menkes……I pulled a stupid face with my tongue out in happiness for being done with what has been a great but most stressful season for me. I am not stupid, childish or a vindictive person….I had prior to the show left a silly t-shirt and a nice note for Suzy on her seat. Why would I do anything to further upset her? Right after a show!!?? Cathy and all else reading this, I am surprised that anyone who knows me at all think that I am that petty or stupid! Anyone who has ever been on a stage would know you can’t actually see the audience. I made a face at no one in particular….I didn’t have a clue as to who was sitting there. Come on guys, give me a break!!!!!

Jacobs’ decision to respond to the backlash in a public forum, as opposed to using the normal channels of publicists and press releases, was a smart one. You can only respond to the blogosphere by going straight to the heart of the storm and engaging the community. Marc Jacobs’ choice to do this on Horyn’s blog also shows how On the Runway has become a formidable community with its own voice in the industry.   And the response from the community has generally been very positive.

Said one commenter of Mr. Jacobs response:

For some reason I completely missed Marc Jacobs post. I don’t mean to bring his documentary up again (And if your reading this Marc I apologize in advance as it’s all I have to go by) but one thing you gather very quickly is how stressful his job is (It reminded me of architecture school and I can’t imagine pulling off all-nighters again for the rest of my life), it’s not only about the design anymore but maintaining a public image as well.

Horyn added her two cents in, possibly to calm the storm:

Some of you probably noticed that Marc Jacobs posted, explaining his side of what happened at the end of the Vuitton show, and I also contacted him by phone. I’m convinced after talking to him that the tongue-wagging, face-pulling on the runway was misunderstood and not directed at Suzy Menkes, though it upset her, and I offered him my apologies for the fuss. After the dust-up in New York, Jacobs said he had put a T-shirt on her seat at the LV show as an olive branch. It showed a cartoon of the fashion critic wringing the designer’s neck and it was embroidered by Lesage. He thought it was a sweet way of making up.

Menkes herself hasn’t commented on the issue since she said she wanted to wring the designer’s neck after his New York show ran 2 hours late. Her recent review of the Louis Vuitton show, also designed by Jacobs, was cautiously complimentary.