Public relations in general are the tool of marketing communication, forming and influencing opinions, attitudes and behaviors. The founder of modern PR, Edward L. Bernays (2004), claims that public relations is not just publicity, press agency, promotion or advertising but a continuing process of social integration, adjustment of private and public interest. In terms of common practices, fashion PR does not differ from general routines of any other kind of public relations.
Jackson and Shaw (2006) state that fashion PR usually deal with the communication with journalists, press and brand campaigns, product placement, celebrity dressing and other practices which often overlap into marketing responsibilities, as differences between practices of fashion PR and fashion marketing are often blurred (p. 204). Brown (1999) simply states that the main goal of fashion PR is to build and further maintain a favorable public image through positive publicity which is usually managed by an active communication with the public and a good relationship with key fashion journalists and style editors.
It is important to note that Browns article was published in the year of 1999, thus before the advent of the Internet technologies which have profoundly transformed the nature of public relations. In fact with the advent of the Internet, public relation as well as marketing and business communication became more direct and personal, interacting with niche customers through targeted messages.
Massive advertisement has been replaced by focusing on getting the right message to the right people at the right time (Scott, 2007, p. 67) and recently emerged features of Web 2.0 particularly social media and blogs provides new opportunities to implement this goal. Diga and Kelleher (2009) claim that the information which PR practitioners gain from using social media network sites may be used as a strategic tool, empowering the company´s position on the market, and build prestige social capital by having the
