Chasing after “walking art”

The front row seats at a New York fashion show are typically reserved for the editors of Vogue and Elle, for celebrities and for industry giants.

But at the semi-annual Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York last week, one front row seat was saved for Nadia Masri, a second-year communications and psychology student at Laurier.

Masri runs her own fashion blog, “The Fashion Visionboard Girl”, which she started at the age of 17.

Now, only a year later, she has already attended two fashion weeks – one in New York and one in Toronto – and is invited to another in October. She has already rubbed elbows with famous designers and celebrities in the fashion world.

Her front row seat at avant-garde designer Alexandre Herchcovich’s show this past week came as a pleasant surprise. Masri explained that before the show, she saw a woman who looked tired and offered to buy her coffee. That woman turned out to be the person in charge of seating at the event.

“After that there were paparazzi on me all the time, it was like, a new face, a new face, who’s the new face?” said Masri.

“There were people coming up to me on the street from Germany asking to take a picture with me and being super pleased afterwards.”

Masri attributes her rapid rise in the fashion world to her outgoing nature and her tireless work ethic.

“I am very outgoing so I take a lot of chances and I work really hard to build my credentials to get me into fashion weeks,” she said.

Working really hard, as she puts it, is an understatement. Masri operates TFVG entirely by herself, acting as “editor-in-chief, head features writer, creative director, marketing director, web master, everything.”

Currently she spends Monday through Friday each week in Waterloo doing her schoolwork and goes home to Etobicoke on weekends, where her bedroom has been turned into a studio for her blog.

The kind of work that Masri puts into TFVG wouldn’t be possible without her passion and drive for a career in the fashion industry. Her goal is to one day be an editor at Vogue.

“In New York, I went to number four Times Square, where the Vogue office is, and I stared up at it and said to myself, I’m going to be up there one day.”

Masri has already received offers for corporate sponsorships for her blog, but refuses to give up editorial control for monetary security. It is her individual style and approach to fashion reporting that has earned her such a name in the fashion world in such a short period of time.

Masri explained that TFVG first took off because of her attention to the effort and inspirations that go into a fashion line. “I guess people started taking notice that I wasn’t just reporting on dinky things, I actually reported on the art behind fashion,” she said.

TFVG started off modestly; Masri explained that she learned most of the coding and web elements from using MySpace as a young teenager.

As her blog gained more hits, she began to get increasingly involved in the fashion world. And as she became more involved in the fashion world, her blog started gaining more and more hits.
Currently, Masri is beginning to be recognized as one of the youngest faces in the fashion world.

At age 18 with no signs of slowing down, she is an example that success is always within reach; all it takes is a little bit of ingenuity, a computer and a whole lot of hard work.