Given prime position amongst this new elite was Scott Schuman of TheSartorialist.com, whose modus operandi is to photograph people on the street who display a unique sense of style and post the pictures on his blog.
Alongside Schuman were fellow bloggers Garance Dore of garancedore.fr, Tommy Ton of jakandjil.com and Bryan Boy of bryanboy.com.
Despite the flattery, Schuman is skeptical.
"It was very nice Dolce & Gabbana put me, Garance and Bryan Boy and Tommy in the front row of their last show but they put these computers in front of us and made a big deal about it, like we were an athlete or something," Schuman said in Sydney recently where he was launching his new book, The Sartorialist.
"And so even though I think it was very nice I totally think it was just a media ploy for them to try and say, 'we believe in blogs now'.
"But you know what, I will believe it if they still have three or four independent bloggers in the front row for the next three or four seasons.
"Then I will say, 'Okay, they really are into it and they really believe it', but if it's just one season and they are not there next season it was totally just a marketing ploy."
Being orchestrated as a player in the fashion industry's broader schemes was not a situation Schuman envisioned when TheSartorialist.com debuted in September 2005.
Yet luxury brands looking to maintain their relevance among the digital generation have turned to bloggers - one-time fashion fringe dwellers - and quickly placed them centre stage.
In this scheme, Schuman is pure gold.
He is a digital darling whose site attracts 100,000 visitors a day eager to see who his lens has captured.
Subjects have included a kaleidoscope of individuals celebrated for their individualism, from Vogue Nippon fashion director at large Anna Dello Russo to a Sydney burlesque performer.
Ranked by Time Magazine as one of the Top 100 Design Influencers, Schuman has turned the street into a unofficial red carpet.
The new-found love affair of luxury brands with bloggers doesn't stop at the front row - designers are now also enlisting their talents to shoot essential advertising campaigns.
Such is Schuman's clout that big brands have commissioned him to capture a new interpretation of their products, including 'The Sartorialist for Burberry's The Art of the Trench' which involved shooting 100 street portraits. Earlier in 2009 following Australian Fashion Week he also shot the Melbourne based SABA campaign. There is also an upcoming collaboration with Calvin Klein for whom he will create a capsule collection of jeans and casual wear with The Sartorialist's signature style.
"If blogs had any real influence, or if my blog has really had any influence, its been having these bigger brands using real people and then accepting that you don't always have to project the image head-to-toe of Burberry or SABA to be able to get the point across," he says.
"You can show how your clothes work into a real person's real wardrobe and that the image doesn't always have to be head-to-toe something brand new.
"So that part I think it has maybe influenced a little bit that they are saying, 'okay to be realistic we can have images of our clothes mixed with somebody else's clothes', and it still looks good and it still gets the idea across.
"It was really great (that Burberry) gave me total freedom, I could shoot who I wanted and the edit is all mine.
"That's why I put those shots up on my blog - because I was really proud of the work and I was proud that they gave me such free-rein.
Then off course there is Schuman's new book which he has been promoting around the world since September.
"As a photographer I always wanted to have a book and a lot of people have asked 'why did you do a book?'
"But a lot of those images I've never printed and I've never actually held those pictures in my hands. So that was really nice to be able to have something to hold and to lay out in a different way.
"I am able to curate my own photographs in that book and to do so that was something I couldn't really do with the blog."
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