I hear a war has broken out between Vogue journalists and bloggers. What’s going on?

Steven, by email

Indeed, Steven, indeed: we are witnessing a disaster of biblical proportions. What do I mean by “biblical”? I mean Old Testament, real wrath of God type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boilings! Forty years of darkness! The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifices, dogs and cats living together – mass hysteria! Yes, that’s right, Dr Peter Venkman: Armageddon has come to the fashion world. Last week, four US Vogue editors expressed some strong opinions about bloggers and, rest assured, I am using “strong” in the euphemistic sense. Sally Singer, Vogue’s creative digital director, decreed that bloggers who are paid to wear outfits and be photographed in them were “heralding the death of style”. Vogue writer Sarah Mower, described aspiring street-style stars as “desperate … risking accidents, even, in hopes of being snapped”. Nicole Phelps, director of Vogue Runway, opted for a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tone, saying she wasn’t just “sad for the women who preen for the cameras in borrowed clothes, it’s distressing, as well, to watch so many brands participate”. Editor Alessandra Codinha really went for it, saying “soon people will wise up to how particularly gross the whole practice of paid appearances and borrowed outfits looks. Looking for style among a bought-and-paid-for front row is like going to a strip club looking for romance.”

Saucer of milk to Condé Nast! Work those claws, ladies! What made this whole thing even more absurd is that all of the above comments were made, not in the magazine, but on a blog at vogue.com. So is being a blogger OK if you also write in a magazine? If you don’t pose for photographs? We shall never know because, while the internet may have infinite space, there didn’t seem to be enough to address these distinctions.

Needless to say, this little hoo-ha has attracted a fair amount of attention. First, unsurprisingly, from some of the aforementioned bloggers, such as Susanna Lau, also known as Susie Bubble. “Bloggers who wear borrowed clothes are merely doing the more overt equivalent of that editorial-credit system,” Bubble tweeted, referring to the practice in which some magazines will include a designer brand’s clothes in exchange for that brand buying advertising. Bubble is right, of course, but she’s also, rather sweetly, missing the point: the key words in her tweet are “the more overt equivalent” and this is precisely what grosses out some magazine editors, that bloggers are exposing the system overtly as opposed to keeping it (vaguely) hidden. Next came the commentators and, my heavens, it sure was interesting to see how many people who wouldn’t normally touch fashion with a cerebral barge pole suddenly clamour to contribute their tuppence. But nothing gets some men’s motors going than the chance to sneer at the fashion world and diminish everyone who works in it, even if they know absolutely nothing of what they’re talking about. One commentator began his take on the situation by referring to bloggers as “young ladies”, apparently unaware that probably the best known is male (Bryanboy) and one of the biggest street-style stars is 54 (Anna Dello Russo), but since when did complete ignorance stop anyone from voicing an opinion? So carry on, please. The only difference between bloggers and Vogue writers, this commentator claimed, is “that if you stripped the fashion bloggers naked, they would look like normal women, not giant Brazilian transvestites after a year in the gulag”. It really is quite touching to see a middle-aged man rush to the defence of “young ladies” by being ragingly sexist and ageist against other women, don’t you think? And people say chivalry is dead.

Here, I suspect, is what’s really going on: you’re all getting played. You, somewhat stunned and hurt bloggers, who woke up one morning and found Vogue had launched a missile right at your Instagram page, and you, absurd commentators, who have just given Vogue yet more publicity in your grandstanding column. Despite the sneery suggestions to the contrary, the editors at Vogue are no fools – in fact, some of the smartest women I’ve met in journalism work at US Vogue, which might explain why it’s retained its position as the globally pre-eminent fashion magazine for decades while nearly every other publication on the planet is in its death throes. They also know that having a reputation for being the Mean Girls of the fashion world does them no harm. Anna Wintour, lest we forget, turned up to the film premiere of The Devil Wears Prada, the movie of the book that depicted her as the living she-devil, wearing head-to-toe Prada. So they knew that saying these things about bloggers would get them attention and further confirm their reputation as the scariest folk in the front row. This in turn re-establishes their place at the top of the fashion tree, far beyond that of any other magazine. After all, would anyone really care if a bunch of editors from, I don’t know, W magazine said these things about bloggers? The question is not rhetorical and the answer is no, they would not.

I’m sure many fashion magazine editors do find the street-style stars and bloggers annoying. Their blatant attention-seeking antics are so the antithesis of these magazines’ preferred technique for a woman to get noticed – which is to be thinner, prettier or at least richer than everyone else – they may as well have come from a different planet. But these editors’ complaints were far too blunt to be anything but calculated. And look at the result: US Vogue has been the talk of the international media for the past 10 days, throughout Milan and Paris fashion weeks, with no one giving a fig about any of the other magazines. Well played, Anna Wintour. Well played.

Post your questions to Hadley Freeman, Ask Hadley, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Email ask.hadley@theguardian.com.