Pretty, Dark and a Little Out There: This Is Fashion Through Glass

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then an Instagram of blogger Chiara Ferragni wearing a Chanel jacket can be worth 42,000 likes. Fashion and social media, it seems, were made for each other. With models strutting down the catwalk as eyeless cameras capture everything, without really seeing anything, fashion observers hold smartphones aloft, ingesting and regurgitating every dress for an increasingly design-obsessed audience.

Even if its members never own a designer bag or brush by the gossamer threads of one designer dress, that audience can now feel closer to fashion than ever.