The Basics

Who are The Fashion Police?

The Fashion Police are an imaginary police force who spend their days hunting down fashion crimes and arresting fashion criminals. Because The Fashion Police like to give credit where credit’s due, they also like to draw attention to those items of clothing they think are worthy of praise.

So you’re not a real police force?

Sadly, no, although a lot of people choose to react to us as if we are. Note the word “imaginary” in the question above, though: it’s just pretend.

Who writes it then?

The Fashion Police is edited by journalist and blogger, Amber McNaught, and it occasionally publishes contributions by other freelance writers.

Comments

I posted a comment and it got deleted – why?

Take a look at our comment policy. If your comment got deleted, chances are you were either spamming us (posting comments purely to link to your own site), or were being nasty in some way. As we say above, it’s fine to disagree with us, but if you call us names, attack us, or say something very offensive (either to us, our to our readers), yes, we will delete it. 

I tried to post a comment and it didn’t appear on the site: have I been banned?

Maybe. If you’re someone who’s broken the comment policy in the past (or you share an IP address with someone who has), and posted either spam or abuse on the site, we may have banned you, as we don’t tolerate that kind of behaviour. Our site, our rules. Sorry. Look at it this way: if someone walked into your house and was abusive towards you, you wouldn’t welcome them back, would you? This site is our “house” and we get to decide who comes in.

On the other hand, sometimes perfectly genuine comments don’t appear because our spam filter gets a little over-enthusiastic and flags comments as spam when they’re not. This generally happens if you’ve used a word like “porn” or something similar in the comment, but sometimes it happens for reasons that aren’t clear to us, either. We check the spam folder most days and if a genuine comment has been caught there we will publish it. However, if your comment hasn’t appeared after a couple of days and you don’t know why, email us and we’ll check it out.

Why do you never respond to the comments on the site? Do you even read them?

Yes, we read every comment that is posted on the site. Unfortunately, though, because we’re a high traffic site and get lots of comments every day, we just don’t have time to respond to them all. If we tried to, it would mean there would be no new posts for you to read because we’d be too busy answering comments. Be reassured, though, that your comments are all very much appreciated: we read every single one of them and we do respond to some of them when we get the chance.

Fashion and Personal Taste

Who do you think you are, telling people what they can and can’t wear?

We’re not trying to tell people what they can and can’t wear. Actually, we believe people should feel free to wear whatever the hell they like, as long as they remain within the boundaries of common decency. All we do is offer up personal opinions on the world of fashion, and invite our readers to do the same.

If you think people should wear whatever they like, why start a blog called The Fashion Police?

To provide a bit of light relief, and because we’re fascinated by fashion, and the differences in people’s tastes. We could’ve just set up a standard fashion blog with links to items we like, but we wanted to do something a little bit different, and to give the site some personality. Hence The Fashion Police.

Well, I think your taste sucks and I disagree with everything you say!

That’s fine. We’d probably think your taste sucks too, but taste is a totally subjective thing and there’s no “right” or “wrong” to it. The Fashion Police is all about opinion – everyone has one, and we’re interested in hearing them. We’d be the first to admit that we’re not always right, and it would be pretty boring if everyone wore and liked the same stuff all the time, wouldn’t it?

I bought a dress/pair of shoes/handbag/whatever and then I looked at your site and you were describing it as a crime of fashion. Now I’m really upset.

We’re very sorry that you’re upset. We don’t set out to cause offence when we write about the things we consider “fashion crimes” and we actually try to word our posts quite carefully in order to make it clear that these are merely our personal opinions. Remember, we’re not a REAL police force: it’s just pretend, and ultimately we’re just random strangers on the internet who happen not to share your taste on a particular item of clothing. Try not to take this personally: we’re not writing about you, we’re not always right, and ultimately, why should you care what we think? You probably look great in your dress/shoes/whatever, and we bet we have lots of clothes that you wouldn’t like, either.

Terminology

What’s a “shress”? And “shants”? I keep reading these words on your site and I don’t know what you mean!

We realise some of the terminology we use can be confusing, especially if you’re a new reader, so we’ve started to put together a glossary explaining some of the words and phrases we use. You can find it here.

Why do you write things like “colour” and “centre” and “neighbour”? It should be “color”, “center” and “neighbour”. Can’t you even spell?

Yes, we can, thanks. We’re in the UK. That’s how we spell those words in the UK. You learn something new every day, don’t you?

Braces?  Um, I think you’ll find they’re called “suspenders”. Also, “vest” should be “tank top”. D’uh!

We think you’ll find that here in the UK, they’re called braces and vests, thanks very much. As we said above, we’re British, we use (mostly) British spellings and terminology. Think of it as a chance to grow your mind – you’ve already just learned that not every country in the world is exactly the same as America – fancy that!

I’ve spotted a typo/grammatical error on your blog. You should be ashamed!

Yeah, sometimes we do that. It’s an unfortunate side effect of being human, sadly. Perhaps one day you, too, will make a typo, and then you will understand that these things happen, even to the very best of us. Life’s like that. If it’s REALLY upsetting you, feel free to email us about it. Please don’t bother commenting on the site to point it out and gloat about it, though, or we’ll just think you’re being an ass.

Style Advice

I’m going to a wedding next month and I don’t know what to wear. Can you find me an outfit?

We’d love to be able to help you here, but sorry, the answer has to be “no”. It’s purely a time thing. We get dozens of requests like this every week, and we just don’t have the time to help everyone, as much as we’d like to. It’s actually really time-consuming to try and hunt down clothes for other people, and we’re not personal shoppers: if we answered all of your requests for help, we wouldn’t have any time to police the world of fashion!

Where to buy the items featured on the site

I found an item on your site that I’d like to buy. Where do I get it?

Each post should contain a link to the store we found the item in. Links are text which is coloured red, rather than black – click on them and they will take you somewhere else. (Note: the links which are double-underlined are adverts.)

I did that but the item wasn’t there. Now what do I do?

If the item isn’t there, it’s probably sold out on the website. This is particularly likely to be the case if the post is an old one: The Fashion Police has been around for a few years now, so obviously our older posts contain links to items that are no longer available, and some of our newer ones do too, because sometimes stuff sells out quickly. If the item you’re looking for is no longer on the website, your best bet is to contact the retailer and ask them about it. You’ll find their contact details on their website. Or try eBay.

Can’t you find it for me?

Sorry, no, we can’t. We don’t do magic. If something’s sold out, we can’t get it either, as much as we wish we could!

Why do you feature so many stores that only ship to the US/UK? I don’t live there!

We can’t really win with this one, unfortunately. It’s a sad fact that most stores don’t ship internationally. Trust us, this annoys us as much as it annoys you. Probably more, actually, because when we post about something in the UK, we get Americans complaining that they can’t buy it, and when we post about something in the US, we get people in the UK and the rest of the world complaining that THEY can’t buy it. Sorry. We can’t please everyone all the time, and until the blessed day when all stores ship everywhere, all we can do is try to provide as much balance as we can. Try to bear with us on this one.

You feature more UK items than anything else, though: why?

Because we’re a UK-based company, it’s as simple as that. We naturally gravitate towards UK stores, and those are also the stores that tend to contact us most to tell us about new products and offer. We are aware that this is annoying to our US readers, and we hope to solve that problem soon. Watch this space.

Communicating with The Fashion Police

How do I contact you?

You can email us at enquiries@thefashionpolice.net

I did that but you didn’t reply to my email, why?

We’re really sorry about that. We get dozens of emails every week, and while we genuinely appreciate that you took the time to write to us, we just don’t have time to reply to everyone.

How do I report a crime of fashion?

Easy: email report@thefashionpolice.net. Please include a link to the item you’re reporting, and please don’t send us photos of “real” people that you found on Facebook, or Flickr, or of that girl in school that you hate. We won’t ever publish that kind of thing.

I reported a crime of fashion/nominated a Dress of the Day but you didn’t put it on the blog. Why not?

There could be lots of reasons why we didn’t use your submission. A lot of the time, people send us links to items that we’ve already written about. (To avoid this, use the “search” box at the top of the page to check whether we’ve covered it before). Other times, they send us links to items that we just don’t think are suitable for the site. And sometimes people send us images (particularly of celebrities) which are copyrighted, and we can’t publish them, as much as we’d like to.

Site Content

Where do you find the items you write about?

We have a “links” list as long as your arm and we comb through it every day looking for items to feature. Sometimes it takes hours. Other times, our lovely readers send us links to things, and make our jobs a whole lot easier!

Where do you get the images from?

We get the product images either direct from the retailer’s PR department or from their website. We get the celebrity images from an image agency who we have an account with.

Can I use the images on my site?

You can use the product images if you want to, although we would appreciate it if you could credit us with a link. You can’t use the celebrity images because they’re licensed for our use only – you’d have to contact the image agency and buy the image if you wanted to use it.  (Note: if you decide to use the image anyway, and you get caught, the agency will charge you, so we’d advise you not to steal our images.)

What about the text? I’d like to share it with my friends  – can I put some of your posts on my own blog, if I link back to you?

Thanks for asking (most people don’t bother!) but that’s not “sharing”, it’s stealing. Our content is copyrighted, and we don’t allow people to copy and paste it all over the internet. We’re not just saying that to be mean: when people steal our content it damages our site, and our site is our livelihood so sorry, but no, we can’t let you do it, even if you state that the content came from us. If you really want to share the posts with your friends or readers, feel free to pass along the link!

Advertising / PR/ Link Exchanges

Why do some of the pictures have adverts on them now? I hate them!

Because part of the terms under which we are allowed to use the images state that we must allow the adverts to appear at the bottom of them. We know this will annoy some of you, and we’re sorry about that, but if it wasn’t for this condition, we wouldn’t be able to afford to buy the images, and so there would be no celebrity content on The Fashion Police. We think it’s a fair trade-off, and it allows us to bring you more (FREE) content. If it really annoys you, the adverts only appear on celebrity images, so if you skip those posts, you won’t see them.

Why do some links on the site have two lines underneath them?

Those are adverts. We get paid for them, and they help support the site.

You have too many adverts! Why do you have so many adverts?

The Fashion Police isn’t a hobby site, it’s a business. As such, it has to make money somehow, or we wouldn’t be able to continue with it. Even The Fashion Police have to eat, pay the mortgage and, of course, buy shoes. The adverts on the site are what makes it possible for us to spend hours every day writing content and scouring the internet for crimes of fashion, basically. If they weren’t there, we’d have to get “real” jobs, and there would be no more Fashion Police for you to read. We do understand that people sometimes find adverts irritating, but try to understand that we’re supplying you with free content, it’s a full-time job, and we can’t afford to work full-time for nothing. We’re sure you wouldn’t either! Magazines typically cost anything up to £5 per issue, and are still chock-full of advertising (have you SEEN Vogue recently?), so we don’t think you’re getting a bad deal, on balance.

I’d like to advertise on the site. How do I go about it?

Email enquires@thefashionpolice.net and we’ll get right back to you.

I have a blog too, can we exchange links?

Sorry, but we don’t actually have a links page, so we can’t exchange links with you. We did used to have one, but we were getting so many requests for link exchanges that we couldn’t possibly accept them all, and there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that Google doesn’t like link exchanges, anyway.

Please feel free to type your URL into the comments box when you leave a comment, though, and people will be able to click through and visit your site from there.

I’d like to have my company/my client’s company featured on the site. How do I go about it?

Send us an email or press release and we will consider it. Please bear in mind, however, that we get a lot of these requests, and your product or service must be exceptional for us to want to write about it.  We also tend only to write about products and services that are available online, or have a nationwide presence (i.e. stores like Primark or Matalan who don’t have transactional websites, but who do have stores all over the UK). If you’re having a sale at your boutique in Manchester, for instance, sorry, but we probably won’t want to cover that because only a tiny percentage of our readers live there and have access to your store. Email press releases etc to enquiries@thefashionpolice.net

Got a question we haven’t answered yet? Feel free to post it in the comments box below!