Wow, Racked really wilded out with this one. It probably took the crew over there a million years to write this because they dove right in and graced us with the complete history of the personal style blog. Does anyone else feel like the personal style blog has died off lately? It's like Instagram took over that corner of the web and now, rather than outfit breakdowns on a Blogspot, people are just tagging their Instagram photos with brands or dropping EXCESSIVE amounts of hashtags in the pursuit of precious likes. Anyway, the personal style blog was a big cornerstone for early fashion outsiders and became the meal ticket for some bloggers to get coveted front row seats, so it's at least a little bit important.
From Bryan Boy to Susie Bubble and Man Repeller Leandra Medine to Tavi Gevinson, this history touches on everything from current day to ancient, 2004 days. What started off as a more noble pursuit, for lack of better term, evolved real quick. Rumi Neely of Fashion Toast lent a quote to Teen Vogue in 2009 talking about how personal style bloggers are just regular girls with a regular clothing budget. Yet laster that year, the Federal Trade Commission passed guidelines that stated bloggers have to disclose if they received clothing for free or if they were being paid for the feature—which now brings in thousands of dollars per post. Meanwhile all of us non-influential bloggers wait for that single email to arrive that will allow us to cash the fuck out.
The landscape definitely changed fast. There was quite a bit of backlash around 2012 calling into question the "ethics" and "integrity" of these bloggers. As if they really had them in the first place. I don't know what people were expecting from people who obsessively post their outfits online but check out Racked for the full story.
