By Stephanie Carroll
Sixteen fashion journalists have received the Atrium Award, the only national award to recognize outstanding coverage of the fashion industry. Winners covered diverse aspects of fashion, from haute couture to work clothes to swimsuits, during 1998.
The Atrium Award program is a public service project of UGA’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. The awards, in their 20th year, were presented in a ceremony on April 24 at the Swissotel in Atlanta.
This year’s winners demonstrate maturation in fashion journalism, according to John W. English, a UGA journalism professor and director of the awards program.
“Fashion coverage is maturing with ‘Fashion! Dallas’ (Dallas Morning News) just celebrating its 20th anniversary and The Los Angeles Times reviving its fashion coverage,” says English. “It’s maturing with multicultural coverage of our changing society and its fashions.”
English also noted the diversity in coverage of fashion.
“Fashion coverage still covers the haute couture superbly, but it is expanding to cover pop culture as well, including street fashion like FUBU, hip-hop marketing and innovative swimsuit coverage,” he says.
Nicole Piscopo of The Palm Beach Post documented her trip to an exclusive hair salon in “What does a $200 haircut get you? Six people and a first-class seat.” English calls Piscopo’s column “laugh-out-loud commentary.”
“Buyer’s Market,” by Holly Hanson of the Detroit Free Press, chronicled the grueling schedule of a buyer for a local boutique and the variety of decisions that must be made. Mark Ehrman of the Los Angeles Times Magazine described the thought process of Fred Segal’s buyer, John Eshaya, and his search for the newest fashions.
Atrium Award judge and past winner Robin Givhan, of The Washington Post, says that reading the entries made her aware of the reporting challenge that fashion represents.
“I was interested to discover how difficult it is to write about the business of fashion,” she says. “It was really a learning experience because it was the first time I read a lot of fashion coverage purely from the perspective of the reader.”
Jackie White of the Kansas City Star, another past winner who served as a judge this year, says the quality of the entries impressed her.
“What absolutely blew me away were the visuals that came from some papers,” she says. “It was impressive to see the interest in the apparel industry, the interest in fashion and the interest in clothing.”
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