>> "I joined the fashion blogging party in 2006, awkwardly shuffling my feet with a cup of punch. Over the years the party may have become increasingly busy, but the simultaneously good and bad thing about blogging is that everybody is invited. The blogs we have selected here represent the best of who is at that party, but that isn’t to say that it is a definitive list of the most influential blogs or those with the biggest readership. Style Feed isn’t a hard-line ranking system, but a celebration of blogs we feel have longevity as valid voices in the ever-noisy world of fashion media, and as inspirational forces to be reckoned with."
Noise. Agents. This deal and that deal. Sniping stories about who makes how much and who has collaborated with who. This is the kind of mould that has grown into a negative fuzzy layer over coverage on bloggers these days. William Oliver, longterm contributor to Dazed & Confused and AnOther and now editor of District MTV went in the opposite direction and instead celebrated the good that has come out of fashion blogging. Will and I put together a list of blogs that we feel have contributed to the establishment, evolution and impact of fashion blogging on the media landscape, profiled them and compiled them into Style Feed: The World's Top Fashion Blogs. The word "Top" is a little misleading of course. The top paragraph is an excerpt from the introduction I wrote for the book and as stated, the book isn't a hardline ranking system of blogs but instead, we chose the ones that we feel are "top" to us for various reasons. Some featured have a shit ton of traffic. Some have teensy tiny amounts. The common demoninator is inspiring content.
My intro is a bit of a sentimental ramble back into the ye olden days of Style Bubble when I was shaking giddily as I took pics of myself in the mirror for the blog as well as tracking the ups and downs over the years of being a part of this still-volatile media. The conclusion is a positive one though and it neatly segues into the profiles of blogs that have been listed chronologically just so I can feel all old and haggard compared to some of the newer ones.
Whilst I'm not-very-subtly plugging the fruits of me and Will's labour, I would also like to thank Urban Outfitters in London for doing a cute little launch for it. Well, actually it's a thanks and an apology. Sadly I wasn't there and had to do the cheesy thing of sending over a "Sorry I can't be there" video like they do at awards shows. I'd also like to thank Prestel for doing such a stellar job of designing the book up. Then finally all the bloggers who replied to the persistent emailing from both Will and I.
P.S. If there are some notable omissions in the book, in all honesty it was because some people really didn't bother checking their inboxes. Or chose to ignore our emails. Or were forgetful. Or late. Simple explanations. No hard feelings *sniff sniff*
