Model Not Com: The Anti-Weight loss plan Prada

About 15 years in the past, at a bus station on a nook in Kutaisi, the second largest metropolis in Georgia, a 20-year-old Beka Gvishiani walked as much as {a magazine} kiosk. Among the many gossip rags and newspapers lay a thick, lovely shiny, gold-foiled with the phrase “Vogue.” He spent about $10 of his birthday cash on the September 2008 difficulty of Russian Vogue, the one version that he may discover in Kutaisi. It was the journal’s tenth anniversary difficulty, starring Anna Selezneva and shot by Mario Testino. There was no going again.

“The [kiosk] girl used to textual content or name me each month,” Gvishiani stated. Quickly, he was logging onto boards like The Vogue Spot, absorbing editorials from Vogue Italia, Vogue Paris, Vogue Japan. “While you scroll the Google photographs, you open your eyes,” he stated. “I wished all of them.” He began shopping for previous copies on eBay.

Now 31, Gvishiani has been working in vogue for greater than a decade, largely out of the Georgian capital Tbilisi, the place he moved only a few months after shopping for that first difficulty of Russian Vogue. There, he began serving to native manufacturers with every little thing from social media technique to worldwide gross sales. He quickly turned a prolific vogue blogger, with a Tumblr referred to as Shiny Newsstand that featured commentary on latest covers. Within the early 2010s, he wrote vogue present critiques for Katie Grand’s Love journal.

Nevertheless it wasn’t till July 2021, with the launch of Style Not Com, an Instagram account that relays vogue information, insider tales and trivia in an arresting visible type — white Arial Daring textual content laid on a cobalt blue background (impressed by now-closed Paris retail temple Colette) — that he turned a identified amount on the worldwide vogue scene.

Gvishiani truly purchased the URL Stylenot.com — which at the moment forwards on to his Instagram account — in 2015 when writer Condé Nast shuttered beloved vogue information platform Model.com, folding its protection into Vogue.com. “I didn’t know the way I might use it,” Gvishiani stated, however his nostalgia for the positioning caught. (The location briefly relaunched in 2017 as an e-commerce platform, solely to be shuttered inside months and its trademark and intellectual property sold off to Farfetch.)

Right now, Model Not Com fills a few of the void left by Model.com, finest identified for democratising entry to the runway reveals. By posting each single look from basically each assortment proven on the 4 main vogue weeks — together with a assessment — Model.com gave vogue followers extra direct entry to data that was beforehand filtered by way of newspapers and magazines, generally made out there solely months later. Business varieties appreciated it, too, utilizing its database of appears to be like as an expert useful resource. Over time, Model.com expanded its content material providing, basically changing into a real-time doc of every little thing essential taking place in vogue.

Whereas Model Not Com’s scope is way narrower than Model.com’s, it’s additionally about democratising entry to data and interesting to insiders in addition to shoppers. A type of visible aggregator, Gvishiani relays the day’s prime information tales, plucked from press releases, model representatives and well-known information sources, in a matter-of-fact, nearly mechanical vogue, sprinkling in bits of vogue historical past and trivia (largely birthdays) all through.

For example, a latest put up on the grid about Saint Laurent’s Spring/Summer time 2023 present merely learn in all-caps, “SLIDE TO SEE SAINT LAURENT’S SHOW VENUE,” adopted by a video of the darkish blue early night sky of Paris, scanning right down to a lit-up Eiffel Tower and finally, the runway ground. He added within the captions, “I AM ALREADY READY TO CRY BEFORE THE SHOW!”

He generally posts 5, 6, even 7 occasions a day, relying on the information cycle, however his posts are so bite-sized that it’s straightforward to eat a day of reports in beneath a minute.

Gvishiani can also be relentlessly optimistic: a wide-eyed, anti-Weight loss plan Prada. (Whereas Diet Prada founders Tony Liu and Lindsey Schuyler nonetheless cowl vogue of their snarky, holding-a-mirror-up-onto-the-industry manner, they’ve veered additional into popular culture — and call-out culture — and curiosity in them has cooled amongst insiders).

To make sure, vogue has all the time had its cheerleaders, however Gvishiani’s enthusiasm will be infectious, not least for jaded insiders. That is a part of his magic.

So is his distinct visible id and the best way he has used the Instagram grid to construct his model. Over the previous 12 months and a half — a period when influencers have spent loads of time complaining that the Meta-owned platform’s algorithm now not favours the creator — Model Not Com has thrived, surpassing 75,000 followers with no advertising spend.

Gvishiani doesn’t contemplate himself an influencer or a journalist. “I really feel I’m a digital media consultant,” he stated. “I’m removed from being an expert journalist — I’m studying on the best way … however I additionally don’t settle for model dressing requests, participate in campaigns or present my face or outfits.”

A number of months after launching in July 2021, he caught the attention of Paris-based Instagram government Clara Cornet, who works on the platform’s vogue and wonder partnerships and helped introduce Gvishiani to manufacturers.

“His method is obsessive,” Cornet stated, noting that he has achieved all the precise issues to make the account pop — from breaking information to utilizing all of the completely different codecs, together with the more and more essential Reels — however above all, creating unique content material. “Highlighting individuals behind the scenes: who’s altering jobs, information in regards to the Balenciaga soundtrack, the variety of hours it takes to make a Chanel couture look … he was actually providing one thing completely new to our platform.”

Now, Gvishiani will get the kind of consideration many content material creators crave. In individual at vogue reveals, the place he typically sits entrance row, he’s spritely in a baseball cap, typically bouncing out of his seat to take a photograph or say good day to an acquaintance.

However his path to budding vogue darling was hardly typical. Born in 1991, the identical 12 months as the autumn of the Soviet Union, he stated that for many of his youth, his city solely had electrical energy intermittently. His household, which owned the native grocery retailer, would get alerts concerning when it could be out there for brief time intervals. “Probably the most thrilling factor for me was watching a TV,” he stated.

After 2003′s Rose Revolution, which marked the top of Soviet management in Georgia, the electrical energy got here again for good. His mother and father, keen to reveal him to world tradition, saved up cash to purchase him a pc and an web connection: by 2005, he was watching “MTV on a regular basis,” occurring YouTube and cramming in episodes of The Easy Life, the now-infamous actuality tv present starring Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie.

“Then the flights began coming in from Europe, and we began consuming Starbucks,” he stated.

It might be about one other 10 years earlier than fellow Georgian Demna (previously Demna Gvasalia) launched Vêtements, however by then, Gvishiani was already dedicated to vogue. Model Not Com’s rise has fuelled his goals, and he hopes to maneuver to Milan or Paris quickly. (On his first journey to town in 2013, on a quest to purchase a pair of Valentino rock stud sneakers, he vowed he would reside there in the future.)

As for a enterprise mannequin, at first Model Not Com didn’t have one. “I didn’t take a single cent, I’m being 101 % trustworthy,” he stated. In February 2022, after he swapped his signature cobalt blue background for Bottega Veneta-inspired inexperienced to announce Matthieu Blazy’s first present on the Italian home, one other model reached out to see if he would do the identical for them — for a price. He declined. “It didn’t really feel pure,” he stated.

Now that’s altering. Gvishiani has begun taking over consulting initiatives linked to main luxurious labels, largely advising on social media technique but additionally doing paid posts on Model Not Com. He doesn’t label these as sponsored, saying that in Georgia, the place his enterprise is registered, content material creators usually are not required to reveal paid ads. If he does transfer his enterprise to France or Italy, the place authorized necessities are completely different, it could be one other story and will alter the best way he operates.

Instagram is destined to stay Gvishiani house base in the interim, however his ambitions stretch past the platform. “At some point, I do know I’ll have a print version,” he stated. “I’m nonetheless obsessive about print.”