Fresh off of New York Fashion Week, the online blog-tracking site Bloglovin’ doled out its 2011 awards for this year’s top fashion blogs. All the winning blogs but one were personal-style blogs.
Personal-style blogs have seemingly trumped professional fashion mavens’ advice and leadership in the fashion industry.
Though often criticized for their lack of fashion education and credibility, the rising popularity of these bloggers is allowing regular Janes like you and me to become part of the international fashion conversation.
Shooting the outfit you’re wearing that day and posting a picture of it on your blog, while describing the origin of each piece and explaining why you chose to style yourself in that way, is now the fashion-blogging trend.
It’s not difficult to pinpoint exactly how and when these blogging phenoms rose into the ranks of fashion’s elite. Often teenagers equipped with no more than a camera, a computer and some time on their hands, these young’uns showed creativity with their vintage and thrifty style of dress.
Ultimately, they demonstrated style savvy beyond their years.
Once their blog readership increased, so too did the advertising, the money, and the spotlight – and not to everyone’s delight.
In Glamour’s spring fashion issue, Katie Couric interviews 14-year-old personal-style blogging prodigy Tavi Gevinson (who sat next to Vogue magnate Anna Wintour at the Band of Insiders fashion show during New York Fashion Week).
Couric and Gevinson touched on the criticism Gevinson and her peers receive for their popularity, despite a perceived lack of credibility.
Many people wonder why the established fashion industry decided to take teen bloggers seriously, despite the fact that many bloggers lack formal knowledge of or training in fashion.
But what they may lack in professional experience, they make up for with mass appeal.
What the “amateurs” are managing to compensate for, where high fashion is failing, is to engage a younger demographic of fahionistas in a dialogue about the industry and its products.
While Vogue has been regaled as the fashion bible, it does iterate a lifestyle unattainable by the middle class. So what of us then? Us middle-class fashion lovers?
Instead of gazing covetously through store windows at items possessed only by the wealthy, these bloggers have mixed vintage and thrift store items with mainstream and original pieces.
Through this style of personal expression, they found a niche market where their ideas and opinions are welcomed and celebrated. Furthermore, style blogging has become a powerful way to gain access to an industry previously controlled by a select few.
Ottawa-based personal-style blogger Justyna Baraniecki of chicshop.ca is a case-in-point. Her mantra has always been individuality in the face of conformity. Mixing vintage with designer items is the way she achieves it.
Baraniecki says blogging about these fashion ideologies has connected a community of young people around the world with similar interests – in a way that flipping through a magazine chock full of expensive items does not.
In answer to criticism from those fashionable few who question the credibility of personal-style bloggers and their informal knowledge of style, Gevinson and her successful peers, such as Jane Aldridge of the Sea of Shoes style blog, have a defence ready in their arsenals. Gevinson and Aldridge never set out to become fashion magnates. They never claimed to be industry experts. They simply blogged out of interest; it was a hobby for them.
The fashion industry itself, not wanting to be left behind, is claiming these young gurus and their followers for itself.
Big name brands and acclaimed ateliers are sending these bloggers free items to shoot and post for the sole purpose of advertising to their followers.
The billion-dollar fashion empire is weaseling its way into the hobbies of young girls and transforming their blogs into industry products.
Don’t blame the girls, blame the business.
What these young bloggers have managed to achieve in a few short years is nothing short of impressive. The impact this medium will have on the fashion industry in the future is something to look forward to.
One thing remains clear – Anna Wintour no longer makes the final fashion decisions.