Thoughts on Fashion Bloggers

[balmain1914]

Pretty impressed, but I don't adore all those bloggers at all. They write for what they get paid, just a kept doll.

 

[PoppyAzura]

Nice piece on Susie Bubble

“STYLE is, like, the wrapping paper of my life.”
The phrase is cringe-worthy. Or so imagines Susanna Lau, who uttered it in Gap’s latest advertising campaign as one in a cast of demi-celebrities delivering sound bites in online vignettes and modeling the company’s clothes.
Reviewing her part in the action, Ms. Lau, a k a Susie Bubble, the creator of Style Bubble, a comically irreverent fashion blog, backpedaled furiously. “I willingly entered into cheesy territory,” she said in a posting late last month — turf that was “marked by lines like the one above, and by airbrushing as well as the fake snow blown at me in the middle of a heat wave in New York.”
Never mind. Ms. Lau is well aware that the signature blend of candor and cheek has given her blog a cultlike status among designers, stylists and legions of civilians who dote on her quirky enthusiasms.

Call her an evangelist: She beats her drum for obscure designers, out-of-the-way shops and seldom-frequented showrooms, her message imbibed by some 30,000 visitors each day. They log on to find out what Ms. Lau thinks of ASOS Black’s “jingly-jangly dresses” or to scan her “to buy” lists for, say, a “bargainous printastic” sweater from David David, a pattern-mad London brand.
There was a time when a woman of her avid, if untutored, convictions might have found her calling as a stylist. Today she would most likely start a blog. Among her fellow opinionators, Ms. Lau, however, has an edge.

“She is a lot more exuberant than some of the other bloggers,” said the designer Nanette Lepore, who scrutinizes Style Bubble, along with her staff, several times a week, combing the site for trends, bargains and, presumably, ideas. “She’s got a fun approach that is at the same time realistic. She knows that sometimes the fun of fashion is all in the search for things, not in their actual possession.”
Fans also include the British designer Christopher Kane and the journalist Diane Pernet, who posted on her own influential blog, A Shaded View on Fashion, that she found Ms. Lau tireless in breaking new talent, and “inventive and humble” to boot.
Ms. Lau’s inventiveness emerges in the outrageous getups she models on her site: a ruffled peignoir over a violently colorful scuba suit one day; a coat in elephantine checks over a dainty gingham skirt the next. She has been known to show off cobalt blue hose hoisted by old-fashioned garter straps.

Her humility seems genuine, if calculated at times to disarm potential detractors. “I like what I like — it’s just one opinion,” she said by telephone from her home in London. “I don’t want to claim to be something that I’m not, which is a critic.”
Ms. Lau, 26, a Londoner whose family is from Hong Kong, skipped the customary coursework in journalism and fashion design to study history. But she compensates for a lack of conventional style credentials by exploring uncharted terrain, unearthing an unknown cobbler, for instance, or offering slick coverage of Hermès’s latest pop-up store.
What began about five years ago as a hobby has turned into a fulfilling, though not lucrative, career. Style Bubble generates advertising, but scarcely enough, Ms. Lau said, to support her taste for Church’s English brogues. “The need to update something and feed it on a daily basis with no financial motivation sort of points to an obsessive tendency,” she said. “I think a lot of bloggers are obsessive in their ways.”
Ms. Lau taps at her keyboard three to fours hours a day, then weaves among shops, design studios and art exhibitions, or reports first-hand on events like the Lanvin-H & M fashion show in New York. She has a magpie eye for minutiae: the crosshatching in a swatch of silk; the latticework on a Nigerian shirt.

“If I’ve bought something, it’s usually because a detail caught my eye,” she said. “It’s important for me to convey that.”
Her finds have snared the attention of chains like Topshop; last year the company snapped up Angie Johnson, the designer of I Heart Norwegian Wood, one of Ms. Lau’s discoveries, to create a line for its stores. But her meticulous images are the bane of other designers who are wary of being knocked-off. “Some people have asked me to show fewer pictures of their work, or remove them,” she said.
Ms. Lau tends to comply with such requests, while shrugging off others because, she insists, her readers can “make of fashion what they will.”
“The magazines and the catwalks aren’t the be-all, end-all of fashion,” she said. “And people are finding that out.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/fashion/09SUSIE.html?ref=fashion

 

[Fabulyss]

Honestly, I hate the level of narcissism that comes along with most forms of blogging. Fashion bloggers seem to be guilty of this 75% of the time.

I completely agree with this. How could anyone take that many photos of them-self? I prefer to read blogs that are mainly home decor related, as they're much more likely to just provide inspirational photos rather than photos of themselves.

 

[Elle M]

It's strange to see all these people live privileged lives just because they have 50.000 hits a day, while others work really hard and finish two Universities and actually have skills like drawing or designing clothes.

 

[DoubleAgent]

After reading these posts, which I totally agree with (narcissism, fame hungry, commercial driven) but I want to ask/point out that there are skills necessary.

I am usually amazing at the layout and web design of a good blog. I should hopefully take skills, originality, and the eye for it. They are often driven and dedicated. And some are actually very great writers.

I see bloggers as (often) comparable to the PR party girl persona, just on a different platform

 

[Deborah]

I am growing a little bored of the way fashion blogging seems to be, as others have said, narcassistic and geared to money making. That is why I scrapped my old one and started a new one which, although it has fashion (its a big part of my life so it would be odd to have none) it also has other things. Opinions on more than clothes and hair. I dunno I just got bored of seeing outfit posts that cost £££ and posts which sound like adverts.

 

[Lapin de Lune]

I am usually surprised by how many of the super popular fashion blogs are actually not all that interesting or well composed. It makes me wonder if some sort of 'coolness factor' has to be bestowed upon a blog in order for it to become the 'it' thing of the moment. I only say this because there are a plethora of extremely well presented, informative and beautifully written/photographed - not to mention original - fashion blogs out there that amass hardly any attention at all. This tends to hold true with all creative media though, and we all kind of know that internet popularity is a strange, fickle beast!

I tend to dislike those blogs which endlessly recycle already distributed content, those which contain dozens of images culled from Tumblr and hardly any effort to produce original content or any writing at all - and some of these are so popular it blows my mind.

I don't write a fashion blog myself (although I run one for my artwork), but I do love to read them

 

[Style Souk]

JCR: How do you think it will change or morph?

DRG: I have worked in online media (among other things) for over ten years and have seen a lot of changes. I wrote fashion articles for a website which were 400-500 words long. Then it was decided that people didn’t want to read long articles on a screen, they wanted easily digestible galleries of top ten images to scroll through in their lunch hour. As we start consuming media on the go with smart phones and tablet devices, attention spans will get shorter again.

That's me - and my wordy ways - screwed, then... ;0)

With regards to the longevity of the media bubble surrounding fashion blogs - and when, not if, it will pop - I agree with AltamiraNYC's assessment.

We will reach a point of saturation where fashion blogs no longer hold the same allure. This day may, in many ways, be overdue. Like taking a sip of Alice's 'Drink Me' potion, the world of fashion blogging is a veritable Wonderland: one blog, leads to another, leads to a further hundred.

Seemingly, everyone has a blog. And their dog (i.e. me!), too.

This isn't an entirely pessimistic argument. Fashion blogs will survive in the aftermath, the backwash, of massive media hype but the bottleneck for those reaching global (commercially profitable?) recognition - akin to the Bryan Boy's of this world - is narrowing.

 

[NorwegianFashion]

Nice piece on Susie Bubble

Miss Bubble is also the first blogger out for Monki Television. Monki has launched Monki Television and is about inspiration related to a variety of themes. A new show will put on once a month where a new face will give a look into her world of fashion.

See first episode here: http://www.monki.com/television/susie-bubble/my-thing

 

[chanelslungbags]

i think Bryan Boy started this whole faze, the first blogger i heard of.

 

[NorwegianFashion]

Stealing pictures

More and more so called fashion blogs find some nice pictures, steals them and put them on their own blog.

Yeah, you are guilty as charged

Now - I know that I, as a photographer, have copyright of all my images and no one are allowed to use them without my consent.

At least... that's the basic rule.

Even bloggers that earn $$$ from advertising are using images taken from magazines / net.

How come then, do so many bloggers use images from Vogue and other magazines without any form for consequence?

 

[Leeroi]

^I think it's due to the fact some countries don't exactly penalize anyone from using copyrighted images as long as they have some form of credits.

It's so easy to go around the law. You can just easily put in your blog somewhere "all images used are readily available in multiple sources on the internet and deemed to be public domain. if you see any of your images being misused, please don't hesitate to contact and we will take the images down."

And it's not like the bloggers are exactly stating that the images were taken by them.

 

[NorwegianFashion]

It's so easy to go around the law. You can just easily put in your blog somewhere "all images used are readily available in multiple sources on the internet and deemed to be public domain. if you see any of your images being misused, please don't hesitate to contact and we will take the images down."

This is a common misconception. No matter what you write on your website, you are not allowed to use the image without the owner's concent - unless the owner writes that it's ok to use the image.

Doing so, could lead to a nasty fine.

The law is pretty much the same in countries like US, Canada and countried in Europe.

Here are a few links that should clear thinkgs up:

http://www.suite101.com/content/copyright-infringement-and-web-content-a140985
http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html

And it's not like the bloggers are exactly stating that the images were taken by them.

No, they normaly don't credit at all.

When I take images for my magazine, either it's editorial or from the catwalk, I have no problem that non-commercial blogs use my images, as long as they credit me and link back to my site.

If a commercial website or a blog start using my images without my concent, I will send them a bill for each image used.

What surprises me is how many images are taken from Vogue and other magazines and not once have I heard that action have been taken against the blogger.

You can kind of compair it with downloading music or movies. They are copyrighted.

 

[Lapin de Lune]

There's nothing worse than Tumblr for this - I have spent a full afternoon trying to locate the source of a particular image and merely find myself caught up in a merry-go-round that spirals into infinity (all images seem to link back to the user, not the creator). I am very rarely able to find the creator of a piece of work.

This is pretty sad, because there are so many great photographers and artists who I simply can't name or follow up on.... aargh!

As an illustrator/photographer myself, I accept that regardless of laws, once something is published on the web, people will simply download the work. It's just going to happen. How this applies to the famous I have no idea, but for the rest of us small fry, only watermarking or exhibiting small files can guarantee any kind of safety. I learned to get used to it a long time ago.

 

[Petit Lucille]

this could sound stupid, but if I upload pictures from say, style.com and credit them, is that not right? I use wordpress and they have an optional function where you tell the other website you've added a link or mentioned them... I do let them know, even though I'm sure they couldn't care less.. Am I hurting them in any way?

 

[subjectivism]

For me, having a blog is not about any sort of commercial or fame-thirsty endeavour. It's just a hobby and a way to share my tastes with whoever's interested. There are definitely people who go into it anticipating their blog to be profitable but the majority (I think) just do it for fun.

 

[NorwegianFashion]

this could sound stupid, but if I upload pictures from say, style.com and credit them, is that not right?

At the very bottom of style.com, you will find the following text:

"All rights reserved. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached, or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast Digital."

I use wordpress and they have an optional function where you tell the other website you've added a link or mentioned them... I do let them know, even though I'm sure they couldn't care less..

That only works if the other site also is a Wordpress site (or other blog sytem)

Am I hurting them in any way?

Photoshoot can cost a lot of money, depending on the model and the photographer (and the set / location).

Many bloggers get money for writing about products and from advertisement on their site. Therefore it's not right for them to use others work and earn money on it.

As for the blogs that do not earn money on it, it's more 'ok' - as long as they credit the photographer or credit the publishing magazine.

If the blogger does not credit where the images comes from, it is considered bad ethics.

 

[Petit Lucille]

UHHH thank you, I'll take it off. I do credit every single thing that's not mine..
So isn't there a way to put up pictures of shows that I didn't take? (it's not like I can get to every show)

 

[NorwegianFashion]

UHHH thank you, I'll take it off. I do credit every single thing that's not mine..
So isn't there a way to put up pictures of shows that I didn't take? (it's not like I can get to every show)

If we play by the rules? No.
But you can ask the photographer if you can use the images.

I know that you can download images from Copenhagen Fashion Week for free, as long as you credit them.

I take a lot of pictures from the catwalk (see 'Fashion report' on my site). Non-commercial bloggers are welcome to use my images (from the catwalk), as long as they credit AND link back to me.

I spend a lot of time (and money) taking the pictures, so it's only fair that the blogger at link back to me. Just nice courtesy

 

[Petit Lucille]

Thank you for the answer. Then, we should think that a lot of bloggers don't respect others...
How about if you scan a magazine? Is that frown upon too? If you credit the magazine, and everyone involved in the editorial, etc, is that ok??