For us college kids, the month of September usually means packing, buying textbooks and getting ready to head back to school. In the fashion world, September is the premiere month. It’s the month in which everyone from designers to fashion journalists to models wait for. September not only holds the famous Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, but the September issue for fashion magazines is known to be the largest edition of the year.

As this important month approached for the 2009 year, however, fashion magazines took a major hit that truly reflects our current economic situation. Nearly every publication lost a significant amount of pages, most notably those from advertisers.

According to The Wall Street Journal article, “Thick Fashion Magazines Are So Last Year,” advertisement pages in Vogue this past year tumbled 36 percent to a low count of only 429 pages. Now compare that number to September 2007, in which Vogue had a record-setting 840 pages with 727 of them being ads. Other notably thinner magazines included Elle Magazine with 496 pages (140 fewer than last year) and W Magazine with 340 pages (216 fewer than last year).

Yet it seems as though a new answer to these economic problems may be in sight. Many fashion advertisers are beginning to put more ad dollars into Internet advertisement. Along with this, a majority of fashion magazines and designers are sprucing up their Web sites to attract consumers and clients.

Celia Rao Visconti, chief marketing officer at New York & Co. just started marketing online this year with favorable results.

“With limited marketing funds, we felt this was a smart and thoughtful way to create brand awareness for our company,” she said.

The advantages of Internet technology are far and wide. Most important is the fact that information exchange can occur within seconds and, for the most part, is free. As advertisers put more and more money into Web sites rather than magazines it allows for fashion information to reach consumers much faster than through print.

Nina Ruben, an undecided freshman, said she uses fashion blogs to get her information.

“To get my fashion fix I always check out collegefashion.net. It’s really easy and helpful because it has topics for each type of clothing,” she said.

Daphne Liu, a sophomore accounting major, also said she uses the Internet most of the time rather than magazines.

“Usually I use fashion blogs such as the Forever 21 blog,” she said.

Even Perez Hilton has jumped on the bandwagon with the launch of his new website, cocoperez.com, that is devoted completely to fashion news and updates. It seems that in this day and age information is slowly but surely moving toward an Internet-based medium. The question now seems to be, will Anna Wintour soon be out of job?