As I’ve been preparing this private email, I’ve been ruminating a bit on the central riddle of our industry: why there is such scant coverage of a multi-trillion business that comprises two percent of global G.D.P. Surely, far more time and energy has been dedicated to far smaller, less consequential trades.

A lot of this has to do with history. The first fashion writers engraved descriptions of new designs onto metal plates. Soon, fashion plates gave way to catalogs and magazines, a bustling business for actual centuries. Unsurprisingly, the first fashion reporting came from 17th century Paris—which, to this day, is still an industry town, like Los Angeles or Washington. By the 1930s, New York Times reporter Virginia Pope was traveling there to write about the haute couture collections.