“This must be a seating mistake,” thought one Filipino fashion blogger Bryanboy, when he found himself seated next to US Vogue editor Anna Wintour, a fashion industry icon, at New York Fashion Week last year.
At 24, Bryanboy has, over the years, emerged as one of the most well-renowned fashion bloggers with 140 000 page views a day, more than 50 000 followers on Twitter and revenue generated by advertising from brands such as Net-a-Porter and Gap Clothing.
This comes at a time when bloggers, as trends forecaster Dion Chang explains, are becoming the “voice of the people”. Bloggers are emerging as a kind of “street journalist. A modern-day freelance journalist”, he adds. “If you look at where blogging used to be, with people like Perez Hilton, it used to be about personal opinion, but it has become a lot more refined. Readers look for credibility.”
Local blogger Vuyiswa Mutshekwane, who started blogging while still working as a fashion buyer at one of the country’s biggest retailers, agrees. “Bloggers have a credibility that consumers respond to and brands cannot ignore,” she says. Mutshekwane recently left the corporate world for entrepreneurial pursuits that saw her opening her first boutique in Braamfontein, Joburg.
“Blogging and social media have definitely helped to grow my business in that I have been able to market the business and interact with customers for no cost, which is usually hard for start-up brands. I am also able to communicate directly and constantly with potential customers, which is very helpful.”
The corporate world seems to be beckoning for bloggers in the fashion industry – and while there are literally millions of them on the world wide web, few have managed to capture the world’s attention.
A pretty simple idea of taking pictures of stylish folk on the streets of Paris, New York and London might seem arbitrary, but photographer Scott Schuman and Tommy Ton will tell you that this is an idea that keeps people coming back to their respective blogs.
Schuman, popularly known as The Sartorialist, has even been published with a collection of his photographs bound into a best-selling coffee-table book with the title of his blog and was named by British newspaper The Guardian as one of the “50 Best Reasons to log on”, in addition to being one of Time magazine’s top 100 influences in fashion and design back in 2007. Tommy Ton often contributes to fashion publications such as GQ and Elle magazine.
Fashion bloggers are fast becoming as significant as the world’s most revered members of an industry largely seen as elitist.
“Fashion editors are becoming more like curators as bloggers increasingly replace most of their functions,” says Chang.
And it’s not only the media that fashion bloggers are forcing change upon. Take Elin Kling, a Swedish blogger who three weeks ago was announced as fashion retailer H&M’s next collaborator. The retailer often collaborates with world-famous designers on fashion collections, the most recent of these being with Alber Elbaz of luxury fashion house Lanvin. At around the same time, popular American bag designer Rebecca Minkoff named blogger Daniel Saynt marketing officer for her brand.
Although his blog is not about fashion, but rather popular culture, American blogger Jared Eng is one fine example of the corporatisation of blogging. Justjared.buzznet.com has grown so significantly that he has a chief executive officer and recently hired the services of a business consultant as he hopes to capitalise on the more than 5 million-strong audience interest in the brand.
“Bloggers develop a trust relationship with their audience and South African corporations may be missing out” by not taking advantage of the blogger trend, says Chang. On whether this is a sustainable trend, however, he says: “It may just peak very quickly and die down just as fast.”
For a long time, bloggers were seen as outsiders. Local blogger Maque DeGorgeous says he, however, found that circumstances led him to it as people started showing interest in what he had to say even before he started a site.
“I attended a lot of fashion shows and got a lot of people asking me what my opinion on the shows is,” he says. “This drove me to blog.”
These days, Maque sits in the front rows of local fashion weeks and his “fashion socialite” title seems to have remained intact.
“I’m not a journalist, nor do I have any technical fashion experience… I am just an average person with strong views on style and the fashion industry at large.”
Many still see bloggers as media wannabes, but one cannot deny the impact they have on the modern media landscape. There seems to be a realisation that online is an important part of publishing in this digital era, and bloggers have been at the forefront.
Fashion retailers and major luxury brands are following suit as they begin to explore e-commerce, even creating their own pseudo-media outlets, as the “middleman”, the publisher, becomes increasingly disempowered. The appointment of British Esquire editor Jeremy Langsmead by Swiss luxury brand Richemont to run its e-commerce business is a clear demonstration of the power of the web.
One of the more popular local bloggers, Milisuthando Bongela, happens to be an award-winning fashion journalist. Having started her blogging while in New York for fashion week a year ago, Bongela’s blog has grown substantially.
She was last year the first blogger to judge Elle magazine’s New Talent competition alongside industry veterans. She also runs her own business, which her blog was instrumental in marketing.
Like her business – a monthly pop-up store that retails local designers in Joburg – the blog exudes a passion for the local fashion industry. “I couldn’t stop after coming back from New York because I wanted to document the rest of my ‘fashion life’ while ensuring a platform for self-expression,” Bongela says.
She adds that blogging has resulted in a wide interest from retailers and magazines soliciting her opinion on fashion and that without her blog, Pulchritude, her monthly pop-up store would probably not exist. “Bloggers represent a millennial generation who are the antithesis to their parents, who were the nine-to-five generation,” she says.
Like Bryanboy in New York and Paris, Milisuthando shares the front rows of fashion week with editors of well-respected fashion publications in the country. And it is no seating mistake but, rather, a representation of the fashion industry’s forces of authority taking a new form, as she aptly puts it.
It is becoming obvious that the traditional media model – especially for magazines – is in its period of extinction. Some titles, like the local edition of Marie Claire, saw this coming. Marie Claire sought to have its own footprint within the blogosphere through Marieclairvoyant, a blog that is constantly updated by the magazine’s editorial staff.
Editor Aspasia Karras says: “People want to see what Marie Claire is doing behind the scenes. As much as there’ll always be a place for the monthly copy of the magazine simply because of the experience of holding it, the real-time feel of blogging gives it an intimacy that you can’t get from a magazine.”
She mentions an article she read about “Twitter-killing blogs” and says the future of the entire social media landscape will be interesting to watch as it is hard to tell at this point where blogs, for instance, might go. - Sunday Independent
Blog Links:
Maque Degorgeous
Maquedegorgeous.blogspot.com
Vuyiswa Mutshekwane
Viemyselfandi.blogspot.com
Milisuthando Bongela
Missmillib.blogspot.com