ABSTRACT
You won’t survive for very long as a fashion journalist if you don’t understand the importance of public relations (PR for short) to anyone working in the media. There won’t be a day that goes by when you aren’t communicating with a
PR by email, telephone, social media or, if you’re lucky, over a glass of bubbly or at a breakfast meeting. Fashion journalists need to communicate with PRs for a whole host of
reasons: to provide them with sample clothes and accessories to shoot or review, for images and prices to use on product pages, for information for news stories and trends, to request interviews with designers or celebrities involved in high-street collaborations and, of course, for invitations to press events and fashion shows. But what is public relations, what do PRs do and how can you make
excellent contacts who will give you exclusive stories? And what about the much-discussed argument that fashion journalists are merely PR poodles who mindlessly write what they’re told to write, namely gushing positive editorial, in exchange for expensive designer freebies and long lunches? This chapter will give you an overview of the fashion PR industry so you
can gain an understanding of all these issues, with useful hints and advice from both PR practitioners and fashion journalists.
