Has the explosion in fashion blogging been beneficial or detrimental to the online reader experience?

Blogging has dramatically changed the fashion industry in just a few years and fashion bloggers have now evolved from denounced outsiders to admired insiders. Today, bloggers are not only updating their audiences with the newest fashion reports, celebrity news and backstage pictures, but they have become celebrities themselves. Sitting front row at fashion shows during the fashion weeks, they are now hosting events and have become famous style icons. Examples of famous fashion bloggers are Bryan Boy, Tommy Ton and the young ‘style rookie’ Tavi, who all made a huge impact on the fashion industry with their unique blogs and photographs. Their success has triggered millions of fashionista’s around the world to do the same and start blogging.

Famous Fashion Blogger Bryan Boy

The rise of the fashion bloggers

The fashion blogging industry is currently exploding like never before. Its growth in numbers is climbing daily as is its influence on the industry. Thanks to the Internet nowadays everybody is able to start a fashion blog. All that a starting blogger needs is a computer and a smart phone (with a camera and video), to update news and events. Everyone can be a reporter and content creator who generates hundreds or millions of views in only twenty-four hours.

With the unlimited possibility of the Internet, bloggers have changed the fashion industry completely by making fashion more influential, more accessible and more global. The blogosphere has opened up many doors for online readers, one of which is allowing the ‘ordinary’ people to partake in the ‘elite’ fashion world. Thanks to the digitalisation and the rise of instant communication technologies, the fashion awareness of people now extends far beyond their immediate surroundings.  These days, before a designer’s runway show has finished, someone in the audience or backstage has already uploaded information, photographs, or trends onto the Internet for style watchers across the globe to enjoy. Now fashion comes from the people. Fashion Blogger Robin Givhan stated in 2007 in Harpers Bazaar that:

 “The rise of the fashion blogger has evolved fashion from an aristocratic business dominated by omnipotent designers into a democratic one in which everyone has access to stylistic clothes…the average people, too often estranged from fashion, is now taking ownership of it” (Givhan, 2007).

Online fashion addicts

Millions of fashion addicts worldwide find their editorials and upcoming trends on the Internet. They consider blogs as their main source for information because fashion blogs are far more personable and more up to date then fashion-focused magazines and television shows. On blogs fashionista’s can relate to each other and communicate with others trough-sharing content that covers the fashion industry, clothing, and personal style. Fashion blogs have helped share and promote new trends to a much greater extent than other fashion mediums.

The range of fashion blogs is so enormous that it now encompasses several sub-genres of its own. For example there are blogs which concentrate on street fashion, blogs which concentrate ‘on the self’ as opposed to the industry and blogs which serve as commentary to the industry’s events, news, and shows.Blogs are also now categorized by writer’s expertise. Fashion blogs may be written by insiders, people who work in the fashion industry, outsiders, people who know a lot about fashion and aspiring insiders, people who want to work in the fashion industry and believe their blog may provide a ‘back door’ entry into a mainstream fashion writing job.

The advantages of many fashion blogs

Fashion blogging have exploded in the last few years but while great numbers of fashion blogs are created every day, loads of these blogs also get abandoned again as quickly as they where created. Blogging is a hard and very time-consuming business, it is not easy to get many followers and the payoff is not what the media promotes it to be. This means that only dedicated bloggers survive online and stay popular. In order to remain popular among their readers, it is important for bloggers to share great content and keep an unique perspective. Today only unique voices gain many followers online.

Choice is a good thing for online readers because more blogs lead to better quality, since only the greatest blogs gain popularity and stay ‘alive’. Thanks to the available amount of online fashion blogs, it has become easier for readers to find a blog that matches their specific interest or style taste. The interests of fashion readers are as diverse as their ages and sexes and thanks to the amount of blogs many readers can now find a blog that personally suits and interests them.

As said before, there are so many fashion sub genres and fashion-niches online that online readers currently have the opportunity to make the choice on which fashion subject they want to get updated. Whether readers want to look at photographs of street style personas or receive updates of high fashion shows, online everything is possible. Furthermore readers can chose to read blogs written by experts or amateur fashion bloggers. Online readers can follow ‘high code’ editors with a professional opinion or for example a fashionista who lives around the block and daily updates pictures of herself in fashionable clothing, the more relatable style icons.

Fashionably Lost?

However for some readers it might be difficult to see the wood for the trees. Luckily for them, there are now many blogger agencies and collectives online who assemble interesting fashion bloggers. An example of an exclusive blogger network is Fashionology, an elite group of beauty and fashion online publishers. Furthermore online readers who have no idea where to begin searching for interesting blogs, can start by following the most “influential fashion blogs”. Daily online guide Signature 9, for example, reviewed more than 1200 fashion blogs from around the world and listed the 99 ‘best’ fashion blogs. The list is an objective, measured guide to online fashion media out there and a great start for online readers who want to get familiar with fashion blogs.

 I just launched my own (fashion) blog! Please check it out at www.alotofinspiration.com!

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Jak and Jill. Tommy Ton. Daily update. February 10, 2012 <http://jakandjil.com/>

Rookiemag. Tavi Gevinson. Daily update. February 10, 2012 <http://rookiemag.com/>

Style coalition. Daily update. February 9, 2012 <http://stylecoalition.com/>

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Okwonko, Uche. Luxury Online: Style, Systems, Stategies. New York: St Martin’s Press, 2010

Sozzani, Franca., 2011. “Bloggers: A Culture Phenomenon or an Epidemic Issue?”.Vogue.It. February 10, 2012. <http://www.vogue.it/en/magazine/editor-s-blog/2011/01/january-28th>.

Technorati. Blog Directory. Daily update. February 2, 2012 <http://technorati.com/social-media/article/state-o...

Wikipedia. The free enceclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Dailey update. 4 February 4, 2012 <http://www.nl.wikipedia.org>