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Fashion
Influencing an Industry
By Cindy Kitagawa
The multi-billion dollar fashion industry is now being led by the most unlikely of people. Long gone are the days when you sat around waiting for your favorite monthly fashion publication to arrive in the mail. Today all you need to do to find the latest trends in clothes, shoes, and handbags is turn on your computer. Information and inspiration are at your fingertips. If you were to do an Internet search on Fashion Blogs, hundreds, possibly even thousands of websites would pop up. Fashion blogs have become an extremely popular way to get up to the minute fashion reports on what celebrities are wearing, designers' runway shows, and recommendations on where to buy the seasons most popular items. Through advertising and independent financing, Fashion Blogs have become highly profitable and are taking the Industry by storm. Some bloggers have become so well known, they are often seen being escorted to front row seats at the most popular Fashion Shows. Manolo the Shoe Blogger, and the Go Fug Yourself girls are just a few of the webs current bloggers who are not only invited to the biggest shows and parties of Fashion Week, but are being given their own columns in such main-stream publications like New York Magazine. Sugar Publishing Inc. a company which has 15 distinct sites including fashion boasts over 50 million page views monthly. Informative or humorous, huge audiences are logging on to read these sites daily. Fashion bloggers are reaching and influencing people in ways that magazine publications are unable to.
As some sites focus on celebrity fashions or on ODM's (off-duty models - and no, I didn't make that up) the most popular fashion blogs surfacing on the web today are by and about real people. Today's bloggers can create an environment that is relatable to the everyday person. Something that most fashion magazines just don't seem to offer.
Street style blogs are hugely popular, even on a global level. Fashion bloggers like The Sartorialist and Face Hunter trek the globe to take pictures of fabulously dressed people on the streets. On a smaller yet still influential scale you can find a myriad of sites where everyday people upload stylish photos of themselves like FashionToast, a southern California girl's musings on fashion and her daily style, garnering an almost cult-like following.
A new site Chictopia, allows it's users to create their own profiles, upload photos of themselves, and connect with other stylish users based on similar body shapes, skin-tone, taste, and age. Although there are similar sites on the web, it's taken just two months for this site to find its following. With 4,000 registered users and 8,000 visitors per day, Chictopia is quickly on its way. The site recently launched its own publication Everybody Is Ugly - a real world dressing guide, edited by the sites most popular style girl, Lulu Chang. Everybody is Ugly offers Chictopia users dress advice as well as shopping tips to "look less ugly". It also features companion publications, Male Ugly (for men), Co-ed Ugly (for college students) and Brit Ugly for (Europeans). With each publication the site is able to successfully reach different demographics.
Sites like Chictopia offer fashion seekers social networking and immediate correspondence that you are unable to get through typical fashion outlets. Where else can you upload an outfit on yourself and immediately receive feed back by hundreds of your peers?
A quick conversation with fashion blogger/ editor Lulu Chang and you immediately know that times are a changin'. When asked about the impact of Fashion blogs, Lulu says, "The industry is definitely influenced by the world of fashion bloggers, with more and more print publications looking to gain web presence. It's also a great way to generate hype for your brand". One only needs to look at the July issue of Elle magazine and a photo editorial called "Le Cheap Cest Chic" to recognize the blogging world's influence. The Internets stylish fashion girls could be seen months ago sporting these exact same looks. Will magazine publications suffer? Although Lulu believes, "their will always be a market for print publications". It's obvious where the industry is now going for its inspiration.
For bloggers like herself, the job has its ups and downs. Unlike magazine publication editors, Lulu and her personal fashion choices are constantly in the limelight. "I haven't really worn the same outfit in like, 4 months! But personally, I just want to redress the world."
And that is exactly what they're doing.