So Long @OscarPRGirl: Is @Fashion Having a Social #Meltdown?

Yahoo Style
Updated

An image from the popular @oscarprgirl account. Photo: @oscarprgirl​/Instagram

Is @Fashion Having a Social #Meltdown?

This week, @DKNY scrubbed its social media presence, and may have started a mini-revolution in the process.

Dramatic? Sure. But also pretty true. Here’s the deal: For the past six years, master publicist Aliza Licht has been tweeting as DKNY PR Girl, a presence that’s part fashion informercial and part Gossip Girl. Through her posts, we’ve been behind-the-scenes during fashion shows, red carpet preparations, and general office mayhem. The account earned the brand half a million Twitter followers and 600k Insta-fans—and made Licht a well-deserved media star in the process.

But DKNY has new creative directors (Maxwell Osbourne and Dao-Yi Chow from Public School), and with them comes… well… new creative direction. Licht has signed off the account and onto her own platforms, and DKNY has announced we’ve just got to sit tight until its official relaunch (and first fashion show under the new regime) in September.

image

Erika Bearman, aka OscarPrGirl, in a typical Instagram from the social account. Photo: @oscarprgirl​/Instagram

So that was yesterday. And today it’s happening again, this time with Erika Bearman, aka @OscarPRGirl. As the eyes and ears (and in many ways, the face) of the luxury clothing brand, Bearman took her 328k followers backstage with models, on celebrity press tours, and—of course—at home with Mr. de la Renta himself, bringing a very young, very plugged-in audience to the very classic uptown brand. But Bearman, who is about to welcome her first child, will no longer lead day to day communications for the brand.

WWD’s announced that Bearman’s transitioning to the role of consultant, and so it seems the idea of “character tweets"—those made for a brand, but clearly by a person—are falling out of fashion. Is the start of a backlash to the rise of an accessible fashion industry?

#StayTuned.

UPDATE, 4PM EST:

Bearman has confirmed the news of her new role at Oscar de la Renta via the OscarPRGirl Instagram account—assuring her many followers that, though she’s moving on, the account will continue.

See her full message, below.

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