Independent Fashion Bloggers

Image via Garance Doré

Image via Garance Doré
Blog vs. print may be coming to a close, or maybe “independent blogs” vs. “media corporation blogs representing print magazines” may be coming to terms. I think. Scrolling through my rss feeder today, I came across Elle Magazine’s New Style Blogs article… It got me excited to see which blogs they picked, and what they had to say about us.

While the slew of Internet startups that emerged around this time [the mid-90's] tanked when the boom went bust, blogs have prospered, evolving into the creative outlet for people to share (and typically over share) information about their lives, for anyone -interested or bored-enough to read on. As a result, we’ve noticed that more and more quality, style-focused blogs are cropping up, offering a visual cornucopia for the fashion savvy in the way of street style images, “Last Night’s Party” type scenes of downtown debauchery (that often include inadvertent galleries of choice vintage pieces and designer duds) as well as the occasional eBay link for items you may have missed but, turns out, need to own.

After this description… which, I’m still not clear about why the writer mentions the dot-com era, when blogs didn’t gain any real popularity until after the bust, except maybe she might be one of those writers who went through lay-offs and years of struggling to find work, and is now back on the internet to find a different world (don’t worry, I’m from San Francisco, I know).

While it’s true that blogs have evolved, better pictures, better writing. It may also be attributed to practice. Many bloggers post every day, hitting the streets, scouring the internet for hours on end. And for goodness sakes, some of us may be, even, you know, professionals. Garance Doré was a freelance illustrator for years before starting her blog, Face Hunter was a copywriter and cool hunter prior to starting his blog. Both Grance and Ivan use their blogs as a portfolio and a way to get work. And Bryanboy? He’s fab, I should read his blog more. The other bloggers noted, I couldn’t really figure out because there were no links and no blog names.

It’s also to be noted that bloggers may start out as hobbyists, but then become professionals. Natalie from Coquette was a graphic designer/art director used her blog to change careers to writing, and is now an an editor at Craft Magazine, and also writes for their blog. Mahret from F&Art was an art history student when she started her blog, now is a freelance journalist, writing for major newspapers, as well as print and online magazines. Susie Bubble the ‘industry outsider’ is now editor at Dazed Digital. And Gala Darling? Well, she’s professionally herself, and doing quite well at it. And these are just people off the top of my head, I’m sure the list would be much, much longer if I did any research to find more blogger gone pros.

All of the above listed bloggers have shown inspiration and perseverance. They didn’t gain success over night, and they very hard to get where they are on their own. It just amazes me the articles about blogging by the general press seem to overlook that point, thinking that blogs just magically appear out of the blue without any real credentials. It’s both condescending and inaccurate, for it takes a lot more work to make your career on your own than to get a 9-5 job at some company. Any entrepreneur and freelancer should know that.

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