Written by The Strategy

Ah, the selfie.

The picture we all love to hate, but take part in no less. Everyone from you and me, to The Pope has taken a selfie. From their days as MySpace profile pictures, the selfie has gone through some major transformations and is now making waves in the fashion world.

Rag & Bone have always done DIY campaign photos including self taken pictures of the models wearing the collection, but recently the trend has been expanding. Not only have other brands, like Equipment, been chiming in with selfie ads, even Vogue released an article on their website starring Kendall Jenner (who’s rise to fame you can check out here) posing for mirror selfies in her various fashion week digs.

On the flip side of the professional, if you will, selfies, there are the countless Instagram “models” who post selfie upon selfie in competition for likes and follows. These people gain hundreds upon thousands of followers, one post at a time. Promoting restaurants, clothing stores, and a variety of brands, these people have turned selfies into a business. If something as simple as the selfie can be used instead of traditional photos for advertisements, and everyday people on Instagram can make a sort of career out of selfies, then there could be a new type of fashion blogger on the rise.

Rather than the traditional “Let me tell you about what I’m wearing” blogger, there’s now “Look at what I’m wearing and what I’m doing right now” bloggers. And seeing as the selfie phenomenon itself gets a pretty bad reputation (being called conceited, self-absorbed, and insecure), there’s no doubt that any change in the way of the selfie becoming acceptable will be met with naysayers. Though with major fashion industry people behind the ads and articles, it could bring more legitimacy to the selfie.

Whether or not you love or loathe selfies, or post them for the world to see at all, we all take them. Which is probably why they’re getting to be popular in fashion ads. If we see a pretty cool picture that just so happens to be a selfie of Daria Werbowy in an Equipment shirt that looks really good, we are that much more likely to think “Hey, I can totally take a picture that looks like that.” Which also adds to our undying desire to generally copycat models and everything they do.

All in all, the selfie is getting a little more love. Both by teenagers and adoring fashion crowds alike. There’s no telling where this could go from here, but we’re guessing a lot more self-made models and ad campaigns.

But first, as a wise song once sang, let me take a #selfie.