You might think that Karlie Kloss is an unmitigated social media fangirl – she was on the cover of Vogue as part of its famous Instagirls cover, after all – but her feelings about Instagram and Twitter's ubiquity at Fashion Week are a little more complex. 

"I do think there is something special that has been lost a little bit – that is, simply being present without the distraction of being the first one to immediately tweet what the nail colour is backstage at Calvin Klein, as opposed to just being there in the moment," she said. "I think that's the case not just for me as a model, but the audience. All the editors are taking pictures and sharing that. There's good and bad to it."

The Marc Jacobs campaign model was speaking at a SXSW talk titled How Technology Colonised Fashion Week. But she also credited social media as a democratising force in fashion. "The sharing aspect is really powerful because it brings so many more eyeballs to the event… One of the things about bringing people to the conversation is it also democratises what is popular and who is powerful. I think it's incredible that a blogger who has a really great voice can earn a front row seat at a show."

Models aren't exempt from the pressures of keeping up the follower count, either. "It's an interesting sign of the times that models are being booked for jobs and covers because of their following on a social media platform," she said. "I walked in the Balmain show for Olivier Rousteing. If you rounded up all the numbers of the majority of his line-up, there would be upwards of 10, 15 million followers."

But these days, there's only one person in fashion who probably gets away with zero social media presence. "I think somebody like Kate Moss doesn't need to have an Instagram. She's always going to be Kate Moss. There's something about that mystery, not knowing what she had for breakfast."

We'll tweet to that.