The evolution of personal style blogging, as seen
through their formats and content.
__________________________ Talía Castellanos Usigli [email protected] 11311061 Supervisor: Sabine Niederer Second reader: Anne Helmond University of Amsterdam
The way that people “do” style blogs is not fixed but has and will continue to change. This is only to be expected from a medium, which, like the Internet that made its existence possible, as well as fashion itself, “lives on the principle of permanent change” (Lovink 2008: xi). (159) ___________ The Short, Passionate, and Close-Knit History of Personal Style Blogs Rosie Findlay, 2014
Abstract
Keywords: Internet Archive, Digital Methods, Fashion Blogs, Personal Style Blogs
This research has approached the evolution of personal style blogs through the features and content presented on their websites. By using the Internet Archive, an analysis of thirteen personal style blogs from different generations was performed, combining Digital Methods and a historical view of fashion journalism.
It was found that style bloggers portray different characteristics and behaviour according to their generation. Their websites proved to reflect a correlation between the blogging software and the practice of personal style blogging over time. Features that once defined blogging practices were seen to have diminished or disappeared from personal style blogs. Parallel to this, shopping and social media elements gained relevance. This impacted the behaviour of style bloggers, as their content became increasingly editorial, curated and more branded. These types of blogs still rely on ‘Outfit posts’ as a main characteristic in content, but their blogs are no longer employed as a real and daily documentation of their style. All these changes can be attributed to the boom of visual social media platforms like Instagram, where bloggers have transferred their original behaviour, affording the blog a new role in their practice. Even in some cases today, some bloggers have diminished or stopped their activity completely. This study concludes by asking for a cross-media platform study and a more recent classification for fashion blogs.
Acknowledgments
I want to thank my thesis advisor Sabine Niederer for her comments, corrections and guidance. I would like to also express my gratitude to Gianfranco Rosolia for proofreading this thesis, and to Silvio Lorusso, Nicola Romanogli, Serena Panariti and Clàudia Giralt at the Publishing Lab for sharing insights and sources from their own research.
Table of contents
Introduction 6 1. Blogging today 6 2. The impact of fashion blogs: The demise of the expert editor 9 Chapter 1: Exploring blogging practices 12 1. Defining the practice of blogging. What makes a blog, a blog? 12 1.1. Blogging as self-expression 14 1.2. Blogging as relations 15 2. A history of scholarly fashion research 17 3. Features, formats and content of blogs 18 3.1. Characteristics and classification of personal style blogs 20 3.2. The anatomy of a blog post 21 Chapter 2: Establishing a method to study personal style blogs 29 2.1. Employing the Wayback Machine and Digital Methods 29 2.2. Case study: creating a generational study of personal style blogs 30 2.3. The elements of the blog. Visual and textual content analysis 31 Chapter 3. Format and content characteristics among generations 34 3.1. Format: the rise and fall of blog elements 34 3.2. Content: image increase and the differences in personal style blogs 45 3.3. Conclusive findings 54 Chapter 4: Discussing the method and results 56 4.1. Risk of the method 56 4.2. Evolution of fashion blogging trends 56 4.3. Social Media and its relationship with personal style blogs 57 4.4. Content transformation and the personal style blog as a visual space 59 Chapter 5: Conclusion 61 Reference list 62Appendices 67 1. List of blogs 67 2. Format graphs 69 3. Content graph per blogger 72
Introduction
Emerging from the abbreviation of ‘web’ and ‘log’ (Rettberg 42), ‘weblogs’ came with the development of the Wide World Web in the 90’s (Garden 483), and have had a crucial role in shaping online communication today (Highfield n. pag). For fashion in particular, blogging tools and software created “a common framework for conveying and interacting about fashion” (Engholm and Hansen-Hansen 141). Furthermore, fashion blogs “as a phenomenon cannot be understood independently of the social software” (Engholm and Hansen-Hansen 140) and as a relevant part of fashion media history, their research can equally contribute to comprehending “social and cultural understandings of society” (Mora and Rocamora 150)
This thesis is focused on personal style blogs specifically, the most popular type of fashion blog (Engholm and Hansen-Hansen 146). It is important to clarify that fashion blogs are a genre focused on fashion, however the “term is generally used to refer to personal style blogs” (Marwick 1). Personal style blogs are specially defined in content by ‘outfit posts’, which show photographs of the blogger’s style and demonstrate a “first-person perspective” (Findlay, At One Remove 200).
By studying the history of prominent personal style blogs, with the specific use of the Internet Archive, this thesis seeks to address their evolution. The study has been created by combining Digital Methods, which is the practice of repurposing digital objects for “social and cultural research” (Rogers, Digital methods 43), alongside an analysis of fashion journalism. The following work hopes to contribute to the vast literature on blogs in new media as well as in fashion research. Even though fashion blogs have been studied through several perspectives in the past years, they have yet to address the more recent transition that blogging has shown with the rise of social media. This study aims to explore further the historical changes in software and how that could have affected or reflected the practice of fashion blogging at a certain moment. As proposed here, Digital Methods can become an important practice to understanding the past and future of online fashion communication.
1. Blogging today
In 2013 Jason Kottke, designer and founder of www.kottke.org, one of the oldest blogs, founded in 1998, announced that blogs were officially dead. He claimed:
Instead of blogging, people are posting to Tumblr, tweeting, pinning things to their board, posting to Reddit, Snapchatting, updating Facebook statuses, Instagramming, and publishing on Medium. (Kottke)
A year later in 2014, in the book ‘Blogging’, Jill Rettberg Walker, stated that blogs “form the backbone of social media” (24). With the understanding that blogs have morphed and changed through time, how or where is the practice of blogging today? And how did this transition take place? Alexander Halavais, scholar in social technologies, declares in The blogosphere and its problems that blogging has great relevance in the formation of the web today:
Blogging predates the Web 2.0 era and in many ways gave birth to it. Blogging forms a kind of distributed consciousness for the Web ; like wikis it manages to draw people together into open discussion and provides a valuable mechanism for aggregating ideas. That value was one worthy of exploiting: because of the blogosphere’s dynamism and rich interconnection, it provided an unparalleled accumulation of attention. (5)
Tim Highfield, digital media researcher, has also narrated this transition of the historical importance of blogs on online communication, and has defined blogging “as part of the wider development of the mediasphere” (n. pag):
Developments like Google purchasing Blogger, and the integration of blogging into news and commentary sites and portals, demonstrate the acceptance of blogs and the prominence of blogging within the popular consciousness. (n. pag)
Bloggers would lean into the use of content sharing platforms by inserting different types of media within their blogs (Halavais, The blogosphere 6). The blogospheres then became the connecting “structures” among them, becoming what created “a large part of the early social web” (Halavais, The blogosphere 6). With time and the development of the other hosting media platforms, blogging became merely another “sharing platform” (Halavais, The blogosphere 6). The role of bloggers transcended beyond the activity of sharing their own thoughts in their blogs; it became also about reading other blogs and media; the act of commenting, sharing and linking, and referring people to making use of other platforms (Highfield n. pag).
Gradually, other types of social sites and social media outgrew blogging in popularity (Highfield n. pag). Bloggers increasingly adopted them not only as a way to bring traffic to their blogs, but also as a way to calculate how successful they were (Pinjamaa and Cheshire 11). According to Rettberg however, both blogging and social media hold this main essence of sharing “thoughts and discoveries online” (Rettberg 24). The difference today is how this takes place on a daily basis through “elements introduced or popular by blogging influence”, that have shaped online communication (Highfield n. pag) The act of blogging is now recorded in platforms such as Twitter or Facebook, “much of what we do in social media is
elements of online content the so-called blogging influence, “whether in style or in functionality”. (Highfield n. pag). This is also the case in web development, which also shows the influence of blogging affordances (Bruns and Highfield).
Another blogosphere pioneer, Kevin Drum, points out in Blogging isn't dead. But old-school blogging is definitely dying, that the online conversation now takes place on social media: “Blogs were democratizing, and Twitter is even more democratizing. You don't have to start up your own blog and build up a readership to be heard”.
Blogging today can also be found in long-form social publishing platforms like Medium, described by Halavais as being focused on content sharing where authors have practically vanished, whilst remaining connected to sharing platforms and search engines (6). Conversations today are fragmented across different social media, instead of taking place in blogs (Rettberg):
We have moved from a culture dominated by mass media, using one-to-many communication, to one where participatory media, using many-to-many communication, is becoming the norm. (Rettberg 48)
This ‘sharing change’, as Halavais describes it, becomes characteristic of the Web 2.0 (6). Highfield however, believes that although blogging does not appear to be as common as in previous years, it is still alive and there is still a place of how they can connect and coexist within social media:
Blogs are “old” media when it comes to online communication but, just as news and
political blogs did not replace journalism (not that it was their aim), Twitter and Facebook have not overthrown the blogosphere. (n. pag)
Being the media that represented the “convergence between old and new” (Highfield n. pag), blogs historically enabled users to be both producers and consumers of content, provoking then a decrease in reliance on professional sources such as established media companies (Pinjamaa and Cheshire 2). There has been, however, the growing commercialization of social media platforms (Halavais, The blogosphere ), as well as the rise of the professionalization in blogging today (Pinjamaa and Cheshire) . Highfield, still declares that the practice will keep evolving and, just how it has formed communication today, it will shape new practices in the future (n. pag).
Naturally these transitions stated in the practice of blogging have also affected the genre of fashion blogs. The following pages will frame the landscape that fashion blogging
produced since their emergence in the fashion industry, and their contribution within fashion media.
2. The impact of fashion blogs: the demise of the expert editor
In September 2016, Online Editors at Vogue Magazine US established a public disdain towards fashion bloggers. Among some of the comments published on their site, Sally Singer, the Creative Digital Director critiqued: “Note to bloggers who change head-to-toe paid-to-wear outfits every hour: please stop. Find another business. You are heralding the death of style” (“Ciao, Milano!”). One of the first generation fashion bloggers, Susie Lau of Style Bubble, who has been in the business since 2006, commented on Twitter that not only had she faced the same criticism years ago, but that "The fashion establishment don't want their circles enlarged… And for the ivory tower to remain forever that. Towering and impenetrable" (Bobila).
This continuous dispute between the established fashion figures, is not the first to take place since the appearance of bloggers on the scene. How did fashion bloggers gain such a skeptical view from the industry? Since its first emergence in 2002 (“The Most Important Moments”), the fashion blogosphere developed further and in 2008, bloggers were even acknowledged by designers such as Marc Jacobs, who named a bag after renowned first generation blogger Bryan Grey Yambao, known as Bryanboy (Givhan). Later in 2009, bloggers Garance Doré and Scott Schuman sat front row at Dolce and Gabbana in order to live-blog the show (Givhan). That period was also crowned as the year of “the fashion blogger” in media (Pham, Blog Ambition 27). By 2010, 13-year-old blogger Tavi Gevinson sparked controversy when she was invited to sit front row at Christian Dior (Phelan).
As narrated by Pulitzer award-winning fashion critic Robin Givhan, in an industry that always managed their business behind closed doors, the entering of the fashion bloggers caused an uproar, with their immediate tweeting and photographing of everything they saw on the runways. The closed industry was suddenly not private anymore. Suzy Menkes, as fashion critic for the New York Times, attacked and questioned the role of the bloggers in the industry. She dubbed the scenario outside fashion shows as the ‘Circus of Fashion’, stating a firm critique towards some of the protagonists seeking for online attention:
Ah, fame! Or, more accurately in the fashion world, the celebrity circus of people who are famous for being famous. They are known mainly by their Facebook pages, their blogs and the fact that the street photographer Scott Schuman has immortalized them on his Sartorialist website. This photographer of “real people” has spawned legions of imitators, just as the editors who dress for attention are
A saturated and shocked fashion industry received complaints from the so-called “old guard” of Editors, while media outlets like The Cut ran titles such as “Will Getting Rid of ‘Fashion Bloggers’ Return Fashion Week to Its Former Glory?” and i-D Magazine debated, “Should bloggers be excluded from fashion shows?” In 2014, a few months after Kottke claimed blogs were dead, Givhan declared “The Golden Era of Fashion Blogging is Over”. Although some fashion magazines showed discomfort, others saw the potential, and relied on bloggers as writers or photographers (Phelan).
However, since their beginnings in the industry, bloggers have been attributed with the democratization of fashion (Pham, Blog Ambition 13). Givhan announced it in 2007 in Harper’s Bazaar:
The rise of the fashion blogger… has evolved [fashion] from an autocratic business dominated by omnipotent designers into a democratic one in which everyone has access to stylish clothes... the average person, too often estranged from fashion, is taking ownership of it. (Pham, Blog Ambition 1)
Soon after, Givhan expressed doubt of the unbiased opinions that blogs could provide (Pham, Blog Ambition 1), and blogs continued to be perceived skeptically for their lack of trajectory and expertise (Sedeke and Arora). As Hansen has stated, blogging brought change in journalism as amateur writers suddenly had a voice too (678).
For the fashion industry in particular, blogs showcased the development of a “hypertextual” communication that was not part of printed fashion magazines, and allowed for several opinions to be part of the conversation in the industry, rather than a single voice (Rocamora 95). Bloggers played a leading role in the democratization of fashion coverage, “refreshing it with a faster, interactive twist” (Iseman n. pag). In an industry where Editors were often known as the guardians of trends and fashion, blogs were suddenly part of a democratic conversation on the web. This changed the way fashion was communicated to the audience, by addressing topics in a way that made them relatable and inclusive towards a regular audience, rather than women of a distinct race and size (Boyd, Democratizing Fashion).
Although fashion blogging played a significant part in the transformation of the industry, its practice has changed in the past years due to the emergence of visual sharing platforms such as Instagram, that are considered today as the favourite amongst the industry (Biron). In 2015, media company Condé Nast announced the closure of their blog network Now Manifest (Brooke), a shift also attributed to the growing “blog-ification” of fashion magazines and changes in fashion coverage (Iseman n. pag). Since 2014, the
fashion press has published articles entitled “Is Instagram killing personal style blogs?’ (Vingan Klein), and has since claimed the disappearance of blogs. ‘The newest fashion bloggers don’t even have blogs’ (Darwin) or ‘You don’t need a blog anymore to be a successful influencer’ (Brannigan). Fashion blogging appears to have suffered the fate of having dissipated into visual platforms but also existing in combination with them.
Research Question
After framing the landscape of the blogging practice today and the impact that it has had for the fashion industry, this thesis will lead the research through the following question: How has personal style blogging evolved over time, as portrayed through their formats and content? What features in their formats have increased or disappeared? Can generational traits be found in the type of content, from a qualitative and quantitative perspective, via the analysis of hyperlinks, text, images and comments?
Chapter 1: Exploring blogging practices
1. Defining the practice of blogging. What makes a blog, a blog?
As a method to studying the history of blogs, this chapter aims to comprehend what blogs are and how they have been defined throughout time since their appearance (Highfield). The history of ‘weblogs’, as they were known at their emergence, begins in the 1990s, as the “successors of the homepages” (Lovink, Blogging n. pag). This took shape with online diary pioneers such as Justin Hall, in the shape of a densely full site of hypertext (Rettberg 16) which contained description of events of their daily lives and information related to their “inner-self” (Siles 787). However, the word ‘weblog’ is famously known to have been employed for the first time in 1997 by Jorn Barger to refer to his own site ‘Robot Wisdom: A weblog by Jorn Barger’ (Blood, Weblogs: A history ). Weblogs were originally built by writers who held HTML abilities that allowed them to post online (Blood, Weblogs: A history ). Their posts were brief but above all, they employed links throughout one single page (Blood, How blogging software).
A new transitions for weblogs came later in 1999, with the emergence of blogging software such as Blogger (Rettberg 19). Evan Williams, co-founder of Pyra Labs, the company that originated Blogger.com, described blogs through three characteristics: “frequency, brevity and personality” (Turnbull). This technology changed the online panorama permanently, since it enabled any person the access to publish a blog on the web without any particular coding skills (Blood, How blogging software ). Being that the process was simplified, Blood implies that the software shaped a new way of employing blogs. The content began to be leaned more towards essays or thoughts and remained to use linking in order to create discussions with other blogs (Blood, Weblogs: A history ). Classic elements that formed the format of blogs were a reverse chronological order of content (Blood, Weblogs: A history ), the post with their titles and time stamps, an ‘About’ page, and a blogroll (Rettberg 43). I n 2002, there was also a radical change indicated by Garden; blogging software now facilitated the introduction of comments, transforming blogs into a more interactive space that created discussions (485).
The rise of blogging hit the mainstream in 2008 (Lomborg), and blogs attracted such attention from the audience that a different genre emerged, creating closed communities and networks of interests (Highfield). Blogging began also transforming media and soon it was also considered a genre of journalism (Garden 484). Blogs facilitated the online self-publishing industry and made anybody able to express themselves to an international audience (Bruns and Highfield). As Blood predicted in 2004:
Weblogs could become an important new form of alternate media, bringing together information from many sources, revealing media bias, and perhaps influencing opinion on a wide scale—a vision I called “participatory media.” ( How blogging software n. pag)
Although blogs might have shown commonalities in terms of layout and other aforementioned elements (Rettberg 43), due to their rapid evolution in formats and softwares, finding a single definition for the practice of blogging remained a challenge (Halavais 5). The lack of unanimity in scholarly grounds becomes clear when looking the scholarly debate on whether blogs are a genre or a medium (Garden). Due to their variations, blogs could not only be defined by their format, and studying them as solely a genre (boyd 2) or networks (Helmond 3) became difficult. However, Bruns and Jacobs, ask for our conversations on blogging to become more specific, as for them it becomes relevant to understand the genre and context of use in order to refer to them (3).
How can blogs be defined then? Anne Helmond, new media scholar focused on social media platforms and apps at University of Amsterdam, states that you cannot study the practice of blogging without involving the software and engineering relationships that surround them. Some scholars like Jan Schmidt, communication sociologist at Bamber University, have proposed to create a framework to study the practice of blogging from a sociological structuration theory, through a series of actions that he refers as a “single episode”, where a blogger employs software for distinct goals of communication, which are framed by elements that provide a certain structure such as: rules, codes and relations (1411):
Through a blogging episode (which might consist of selecting, publishing, and networking; see below), the blogger (re)produces aspects of the guiding rules, (re)establishes social relations, and stabilizes or changes the way software-code is designed and employed. (1411)
Through this frame, Schmidt implies that bloggers have not one, but several roles within the act of blogging. Those are being both an author, a reader and a networker, engaging and changing constantly from managing information, to relationships, and identity (Schmidt 1415). Other academics such as boyd, have proposed to study blogs as a medium rather than a genre, as blogs are not solely a genre in communication, but the medium through which communication takes place. Social media scholar Boyd, states that definitions of blogs often fail to understand the practice of blogging. She proposes then to study not only the production of the blog, but to see them as a medium and bi-product of practice (boyd). In this way the blogs are “both the digital body as well as the medium through which bloggers express themselves” (boyd 11). More simply said in her own words, “blogs emerge because
bloggers are blogging” (boyd 11). Boyd states that mediums are responsive, allowing several expressions in constant transformation:
By reframing blogs as a culture-driven medium upon which the practice of blogging can occur, it is possible to understand the diversity in structure and content. (13)
Halavais, on the other hand, also denies the focus on defining blogs by way of their software technologies or as merely as another aspect of websites (Halavais, The blogosphere). Blogs might have shown a particular anatomy in the past, but given that in today’s blogging landscape blogging software such as Wordpress is not solely used for blogging purposes, there is no longer a distinction that could be drawn among them (Halavais Free frame 5). Halavais then proposed not to study blogs, but the practice of blogging (Free frame ). In 2016, he also revisits the term of blog, and asks to define it as being part of the blogosphere. In this way, he encourages basing the definition in the social and networked nature that exists in the practice of blogging.
As blogs have changed constantly over time, in order to understand the essence of the practice of blogging that can be found across the web today (Halavais, The blogosphere ), this chapter will explore the functions of blogging throughout the years.
1.1. Blogging as self-expression
According to Bruns and Jacobs, the expression of personal identity takes place within the personalization of content inside the frame of the blogging platform (5). Boyd specifically states that blogging is about sharing a set of “expressions” in one same outlet: the blog (10). In this way, each “expression” is linked to the “expression” before, and therefore creating a collection of such “expressions” in a single local space (boyd 10). These “expressions” are active and in process, which in the end provokes the dynamism and interactivity that comes to differ the blog from a static webpage. Bloggers appear to see themselves in their own blogs, as it becomes an aspect of them that has been captured, aided by this practice; a reflection of their interests and values (boyd 11). This, according to boyd, creates a “sense of corporeality to blogging” (13), in which case the blogs are the body that represents the blogger and the “space for the embodied digital individual” (boyd 17).
Several other academics have pointed out the relevancy of blogs in the grounds of expression of the self. Geert Lovink, media theorist and critic, has claimed that “the essence of a blog is not the interactivity of the medium: it is the sharing of the thoughts and opinions of the blogger” (Lovink, Blogging n. pag). Halavais for example, states that blogs become special because they are spaces of personal exploration (Free frame 5). Rettberg defines
blogs as personal, written in the first person, with a subjective perspective regarding their life or another specific topic (19). Blood, on the other hand, mentions that blogging is also driven by the purpose of self-expression, as much as sharing thoughts in a space that is personalised by the blogger (Blood, How blogging software ). This also carries the same motivations that are mentioned by Schmidt, which include the act of creative expression and documenting personal experiences (1411). On similar results, among the outcomes found by Nardi, Bonnie A., et al in their research, the motivations for a blogger to blog included:
Documenting one’s life; providing commentary and opinions; expressing deeply felt emotions; articulating ideas through writing; and forming and maintaining community forums. (43)
The act of personalising content in the blog as a platform is what ultimately turns bloggers into what Bruns and Jacobs describe as ‘produsers’, a term that is described as the mix of the word producer and user (6). Bloggers engage in both of these practices, producing then an environment in the blogosphere that is “massively distributed, collaborative produsage of information and knowledge” (Bruns and Jacobs 6).
1.2. Blogging as relations
Blogs are located within an “networked and hypertextual environment” (Helmond 6), causing them to be in constant movement (Schmidt 1412). Schmidt explains that there are two relations that occur in the practice of blogging: hypertextual and social (1415). The first ones, are given through the links in the blog via the software (Schmidt 1415), in the act of commenting, linking, RSS feed and blogroll (Halavais, The blogosphere 2). The second ones are not necessarily via links, meaning any relationship that the blogger engages outside the blog, as well as reading other people’s blogs (Schmidt 1415).
Nardi, Bonnie A., et al. research further accentuates the social activity of blogs as a main motivation as to why people engage in the practice (224). There is a relationship of mutual communication that gets formed between the blogger and the audience through the act of writing and reading blogs (Nardi, Bonnie A., et al. 224). “Blogs create the audience, but the audience also creates the blog.” (Nardi, Bonnie A., et al. 224 ). These relationships arise through a series of acts that include:
Friends urging friends to blog, readers letting bloggers know they were waiting for posts, bloggers crafting posts with their audience in mind, and bloggers continuing discussions with readers in other media outside the blog. (Nardi, Bonnie A., et al., 224).
The idea that blogs are merely employed as diaries or journals is uncovered by Nardi, Bonnie A., et al. (229). The authors claim instead that blogging has strong social motivations which includes reading and listening to others, as well as keeping friends updated (Nardi, Bonnie A., et al., 228). Helmond has transferred her own experience as a blogger and explains that the practice of blogging also includes a “daily routine”, in which a blogger engages in reading other blogs, making comments and replying to them, as well as as going through statistics (83).
As stated by Rettberg in 2014, blogs are social and can be perceived as social media (79). In this way, blogs create social networks through links to dialogues that are taking place in other blogs, through the blogrolls, and the feature of comments that would encourage other bloggers to leave links to their personal blogs (Rettberg 79):
Blogs are a relatively free-form type of social media, and are decentralized, often running on their author’s own domains and connecting haphazardly to other blogs. (79)
Blogs also became an opportunity to be in touch with an “assemblage” of audiences with similar affiliations (Halavais, Free form 8) that otherwise would have not engaged with, all within the means of expression of the blogger themselves (Bruns and Jacobs). The understanding of a blog as “assemblage”, makes it possible to take into consideration the distinct “texts” that create a blog, such as Flickr photos, Twitter updates, etc (Helmond 6).
When sharing a blog with an audience, the space loses its privacy and becomes more “dynamic” (Halavais 5). “What makes a blog a blog is that it is shared with others and often with a public that is unknown” (Halavais 5). Blogs are not independent, but are part of a “web of relations” (Helmond 6). Rettberg also states that, “blogs support a dense network of small audiences and many producers.” (Rettberg 76) Halavais explains the role that blogosphere has on the web:
[Blogospheres] could easily draw together disparate social platforms. This ability to draw together not just technical pieces of the Web, but the social elements that they are infused with — the pulling together of pieces of people’s public and private lives — provided a space for sociality. (The Blogosphere 5)
2. A history of scholarly fashion research
The following chapter addresses several academic studies to understand the specific genre of fashion blogs, starting with special attention on a prominent study that showcases a unique combined perspective of fashion with new media theory. Agnès Rocamora a fashion
media, social and cultural scholar from London College of Fashion, discusses the “newness” of fashion blogs versus traditional media (Rocamora 94). Rocamora points out hypertextuality as a main difference between traditional media and blogs, as it allows for an open structure that creates constant relations from one blog to other sources. Hypertextuality also creates a decentred fashion system, “the fashion blogosphere allows a wide range of places to become visible, extending the boundaries of the geography of fashion” (Rocamora 99). Remediation is also addressed in her research, as blogs constantly “borrow” from printed media (Rocamora 101). Furthermore, via the concept of the rhizome taken from Deleuze and Guattari, Rocamora explains that a blog’s structure is in continuous movement (Rocamora 96). This brief temporality has impacted the fashion pace by creating “short memory” (Rocamora 96).
Moreover the impact of digital technologies in fashion is revised by Louise Crewe, scholar in human geography at University of Nottingham. Crewe states that blogging holds an influence in the pace of how fashion is consumed and the change in relationships of the traditional fashion system. Furthermore, through a different angle, journalist Kayla Cheyenne Boyd, makes an exploration of the impact that fashion blogs have had on the consumer compared to traditional fashion media, as they are more inclusive in race and size by giving the opportunity to “normal” women to be able to reflect their own style.
Minh-Ha T. Pham, media studies scholar from Pratt Institute, focused on race, gender and capitalism, also touches upon the role of fashion blogs and the democratization of fashion, referring to some fashion blogs as cultural and political places. In 2013, Pham also focused on the case of a specific fashion blogger, Susie Lau from Style Bubble, to show she reflects the trend of young Asian young women “as consumers and producers in the digital economy” (245). Fashion blogging has also been explored from the perspective of the “self” by different authors. From gender and identity (Rocamora, Personal fashion blogs ), to how dress practices in blogs express self-identity and construct a “fashionable persona” addressed by Monica Titton, sociologist, cultural critic and fashion researcher at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Tara Chittenden, researcher at the Law Society, sought to understand how teenage girls can also construct their identity through fashion blogs, and Ann-Charlotte Palmgren, specialised in Women’s Studies at Åbo Akademi University in Finland, does a contribution in identity and gender exploration through the outfit posts made in the Swedish blogosphere. Furthermore Alice Marwick, media studies researcher at Fordham University, has focused on the role that authenticity plays in fashion blogging from content, to the type of relationships that bloggers have among them.
In 2014, Ida Engholm and Erik Hansen-Hansen, both from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, explore the form, content aesthetics and layouts of the fashion blogs to
fashion magazines; ‘Fashiondustrias’, established bloggers and already professionals within the fashion industry; ‘Street Style’, a blogging used to showcase the style of “real” people in the streets as documentary photography; and ‘Narcissus’, focused on the style of the blogger “one of the most widespread fashion blog forms” (141).
In the following studies, scholars have also engaged with the exploration of blogospheres in netnographic studies, from a perspective of self-branding. Esposito, Massaro, Vecchiarini & Crudele, different scholars with a focus in qualitative social research and marketing, have explored the Italian blogosphere to understand how bloggers build personal branding. Branding and style as a way of building communities, through the activity of linking, has been the approach of Christofer Pihl from Stockholm University School of Business, in Swedish blogs. Edward McQuarrie, from a marketing angle, points out how consumers are impacted by fashion blogs that are rewarded financially for exhibiting their “taste”. Media studies specialists Sedeke and Arora, the latter from Erasmus University Rotterdam, focus on an identity, marketing and brand perspective to understand the role fashion blogs have in the industry.
3. Features, formats and content of blogs
In following the study of personal style blogs, I will look at both the format and content of the blogs through time. Before introducing the methodology, the elements and characteristics of personal style blogs will be explored through this section as a backbone to the study.
Whilst the creation of blogs originally required HTML skills (Blood, How blogging software), after the introduction of blogging software, it soon meant there were no restrictions in form of content for the writer (Blood, Weblogs: A history ). The software tools have allowed bloggers to convey their content in a similar looking format that shows comparable attributes such as timestamps, permalinks and post dates (Hourihan). Blogging software also permits a certain layout, as well as the insertion of specific text or media (Schmidt 1417).
Blogs were previously defined by their form, which is typically “frequently updated, reverse-chronological entries on a single Web page” (Blood, How blogging software ). However, “as blogs and blogging are not restricted to a narrow definition of both medium and practice, it allows for a great variety of intentions and outputs” (Helmond 7). Even though a definition of blogging cannot be reached through their output, it can however show the functions they allowed at a certain moment in time, and as a consequence the evolution in the practice. Highfield implies for example, that the purpose and the use of blogs in early 2000 as personal websites focusing on a specific topic or documenting someone’s life, was
a direct reflection of the affordances and functionalities that the blogs facilitated at that moment (n. pag).
Through their formats, blogs can convey openness in communication (Hourihan). In 2002, Hourihan stated that an aspect of blogs was the casual and informal tone that posts posts presented in a short form; not featuring content as one whole truth, but showcasing it as content open to a conversation. The features of the blog also become an important part of this, with the possibility to leave comments on each posts, as well as the contact address that is displayed on the main page (Hourihan), and the use of links to the sources or to other bloggers who are addressing the same type of topic (Rettberg 19). This invites readers to reach out and talk to the blogger and create a dialogue (Hourihan). In this way blogs become dynamic (Schmidt 1415).
As Hourihan narrates, the characteristic of posts are brevity, informality, and a ‘conversational’ tone (n. pag). Their content aim to open discussions, not merely showing a final ‘argument’ (n. pag). Hourihan also explains that although the content might differ from blogger to blogger, bloggers update posts in a frequent manner (n. pag). Combined with the chronologically reversed format with time-stamps, readers expect a constant feed of information (Hourihan). This in turn encourages conversations, although this type of communication referred to as asynchronous by Lomborg, does not need to be immediate, as in the case of “Instant Messaging” (Schmidt 1412).
Furthermore, features and elements can give insight to the types of interactions and practices linked to blogging, but content can also showcase the nature of the blog, what its focus is, and how it is employed (Lomborg). Stine Lomborg, media scholar at the University of Copenhagen, proposes a specific classification through the functions in the communication that are shown in the blog:
From the socio–pragmatic perspective it advocates, even minor stylistic differences are assumed to have an impact upon the social uses and communicative qualities of the weblog. Such nuances and subtle differences between weblogs should be taken seriously. (n. pag)
She proposes to observe three dimensions in a blog and their combination: Content, in reference to how it can be either internal to topical and how much personal information is the blogger revealing; Directionality, to identify the interaction seen in the blog and if it is about self-expression or if it creates conversations, and Style, to point out how much intimacy is showcased in the blog is it about self-introspection or if it leans to arguments and facts (Lomborg).
3.1. Characteristics and classification of personal style blogs
As this study is focused in the particular case of personal style blogs, it is worth mentioning specific characteristics that are referred by Rosie Findlay in purpose and content. Findlay, fashion media lecturer of London College of Fashion, has developed several papers specifically around the phenomena and history of personal style blogging.
According to her research, personal style blogs “fashion their identity on their blogs” (At One Remove 197) and the content is "highly subjective" (At One Remove 200):
Style blogs thus become both the space in which bloggers realize their own fashioned self and the site at which their readers experience them as stylish. These blogs have become a place for the display of the new and a realization of the imaginary, as well as a site to record 'what I wore’. (At One Remove 197)
‘Outfit posts’ are the key feature of style blogs, being described as the blogger making a styling of their garments to upload to their blogs ( At One Remove 200). Outfit posts are a type of documentation placed in a “temporal context” for what a blogger wore ( At One Remove 200) . They would often use titles in their posts such as “What I wore” or “Today’s outfit” (At One Remove 200 ). This however later evolved into bloggers not necessarily recording their ‘real’ daily outfits, but creating an outfit for the specific purpose of photographing it (At One Remove 200).
In terms of a classification, Findlay points out two different waves in the movement of personal style blogging (The Short 159) . Although she frames them in certain periods of time, she clarifies that this does not relate to when a blog necessarily began but instead it can represent “the ethos underpinning the blog” (The Short 170). She establishes the first movement since the emergence of the first fashion blog up until the end of 2009 (The Short 167). The content of a blogger of the first wave would typically revolve around DIY projects, 1 imitating runway looks (The Short 168) and taking “photographs for their outfit posts . . . often in locations such as in their living room, their bedroom, or their backyard, customarily using a tripod and their camera timer” (The Short 167). Topics of style and fashion were more popular than just talking about a latest trend for example (The Short 168). At this point there was barely a connection between the fashion bloggers and the industry (The Short 169).
The end of 2008 and halfway through 2010 marks for Findlay an interval, before the second wave is established (The Short 169). The second wave showcased that brands and fashion media began to be attracted to the power of the blog as a channel to reaching
consumers (The Short 169). These bloggers were focused on the possibility of using their blogs as a means of monetisation, becoming some sort of “celebrity” or use it as a portfolio of work (The Short 170). Characteristics on their site included advertising or collaboration with brands. In their ‘outfit posts’, bloggers would use fashion trends and personalise them, showing a more editorialised look (The Short 171).
3.2. The anatomy of a blog post
Throughout time, blogs developed specific formats (Helmond 7) and certain features in the blog as mentioned previously, helped create a relationship between the blogger and the readers (Lomborg). Moreover, as Helmond has stated, “the structure of the blog and the anatomy of the blog post has consequences for the blog's relation to the engines” (11). The following research in literature, outlines the key elements that have distinguished the old features of the blogs’ form throughout the years:
Posts. A core part of the blog, and what sets the difference between the blog and a web page (Helmond 10). Hourihan has referred to them as “self-contained topical unit” (n. pag). The grouping of posts, is what marked a difference between the blog and the home page, the predecessor of the blog (Hourihan). Posts can range from being short to long. The fact that posts do not offer limitation in terms of space, means that authors can also have a voice even through short content. “The weblog's post unit liberates the writer from word count” (Hourihan n. pag).
Hyperlink. Hypertextual linking allows for blogs to create relations through the diverse features provided in the blog’s software. Linking could exemplify the citing of a source, a certain relationship or partnership among the bloggers, or a way of providing more context through the original source or any type of extra information (Schmidt 1415). Linking creates connections that tie bloggers together (Hourihan).
The Permalink. This stands for the URL that is permanent for each blog post, allowing for others to link directly not just to a homepage but a specific piece of content (Schmidt 1415). This feature allows for the bloggers to respond or communicate to a particular post. (Hourihan).
The Time Stamp. This allows for the reader to see when an author made an entry or last updated it, in a way that can be a shared connection among them (Hourihan).
Blogroll. Through these links it is also possible for the blogger to create relations, as they show lists of recommended blogs, showing association or friendship towards another, or
even just as a sign of “reciprocity” for someone who also has them on their blogroll (Schmidt 1415).
Comments. Comments are also a way of creating relations between blogs (Schmidt 1415), as well as dialogue (Hourihan).
Contact section. By leaving their contact and emails, bloggers show an interest to entering a discussion with the reader (Hourihan)
Tags. Meta information shown underneath or above the blog post that enables categorization, search and archiving within the blog or in search engines (Helmond 11).
RSS. An interactive feature that stands for Really Simple Syndication, and permits the readers to subscribe to a blog, make linkbacks or pingbacks, and notify a blogger when another blogger has linked to their post. This also allows for communication between bloggers, as it helps them address or respond to discussions in other blogs (Blood, Weblogs: A history).
In her own research, Helmond deconstructs the structure of her blog in order to underline its anatomy, including “the header, navigation, content, sidebar and footer” (Helmond 8). A similar exercise was created to add more recent blog features, specific to personal style blogs. In ‘Figure 1’, a selection of formats from old generations of personal style blogs can be observed, followed by a synthesis of its structure in ‘Figure 2’. ‘Figure 3’ presents the common formats among style bloggers today and it is also accompanied by a summary in ‘Figure 4’.
Figure 1. Compilation of personal style blogs 2006 - 2010. Common formats among older generations.
Figure 2. Anatomy of a Personal Style Blog. Based on common formats presented in older generations through
2006 - 2010. Note: Only key elements are included.
Figure 3. Compilation of personal style blogs. Common formats of 2017.
Figure 4. Anatomy of a Personal Style Blog. Based on common formats presented in 2017. Note: Only key
elements are included.
After this exercise, it was concluded that the following elements are present in the anatomy of these type of blogs over time:
General structure. This section shows the general layout of the page, the header, navigation, footer, and if the main focus in the page are images. It includes: Personalized banner, Horizontal navigation, Carousel images or squares of images, All posts visible in Homepage, Browsing posts incentives, Infinite scroll, Older post / Next / Previous, Video category.
Sidebars or navigation. The following elements are usually contained in the sidebar or horizontal menu sections. However as mentioned previously, they denote the type of interactions that occur in the blog: ‘About’ section, personal contact, professional contact, blogroll, blog archive, press, language, location. More specific elements found are classified by type of activity:
Monetisation. The blog displays the type of monetisation sometimes as sponsors or advertising.
Sign up and follow the blog. These features indicate the type of communication and activity in the blog: RSS or Email subscriptions.
Affiliations. The blog can also display through images or text if they belong or affiliate to a certain magazine or group, indicating types of activity: NowManifest, Magazine (they work for), Brand collaborations they have done.
Style Networks. These affiliations can be more specifically directed to a certain blogger or style network: Independent bloggers, Bloglovin’, Chictopia, Lookbook.nu, Other style web (Streetstyle.es, Fashiolista, Chicisimo, Polyvore), Other awards.
Post. Focused solely in the area of the post, the following elements would show how much a blog is focused on images or text, and also what type of interactions they support as most relevant: First in post (Date, headline, image, or section), Date with day, Date, Section/Category, Labels/Tags, Timestamp, Permalink, Posted by, Hyperlinks highlighted, Comments, Next/Previous post, Further browsing posts incentives, Images interactive.
Share Post. Within the post area, sharing elements include Email, Stumble it, Blogger, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google +, showing the number of shares in all buttons.
Share Image. In the post area, it is seen whether images also show a type of sharing feature: Pin from read more / or that button, Pin from homepage rolling over, Share in other platforms (email, fb, tw, tumblr).
Social Media. This section would show social media presence and therefore the activities of the blogger and the importance of metrics within the blog or the reinforcement of certain interactions: Online users, Visitor/Page counter, MySpace, Fotolog, Flickr, Social media showing counts (Followers displayed), Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google +, Pinterest, Instagram, Instagram featured posts, Youtube, Ask Fm, Snapchat, Live Feed.
Shopping features. In the case of personal style blogs, shopping features are relevant detail that often showcase a way of monetisation for the blogger as well as the type of activity in the blog, this includes: Shopping suggestions as lists of links, Shop product directly from sidebar, Shop as category in menu, Shopping galleries in the post, Favourite products or wish list, Buy my looks or style, Shop Instagram Feed, Promotion or category to sell their own product or brand and Interactive shopping features in post images.
Chapter 2: Establishing a method to study personal style blogs
In order to understand the evolution of the personal style blogs in a comprehensive way, the research proposes to focus on two different aspects: format and content. This study builds a collection of personal style blogs by looking at the website history and explores their format elements with the aim of finding which characteristics have evolved or disappeared. Parallel to this is a content analysis, both qualitative and quantitative, that comprises the study of elements in posts such as text, image, comments and hyperlinks.
Before introducing the case study it is relevant to talk further about the contribution this study is aiming to achieve. Even though blogging practices might be difficult to be studied through their output as they might differ in “intentions” and formats (Helmond 7), sites can reflect blogging practice at a certain point in time. The method in this research mixes the study of the format and content with the intention that it can help understand the historical changes in software, the role that the blog has had over time and the evolution of the practice of personal style blogging.
Digital Methods is being proposed in this context to explore fashion media history.
Personal style blogs have been mostly studied by their content, which in many cases does not allow to see the complete scenario of how certain software features also built and shaped the practice of blogging over time. As stated earlier, the study of fashion blogging
“as a phenomenon cannot be understood independently of the social software” (Engholm and Hansen-Hansen 141). This research employs a holistic method and aims to explore different generations of personal style bloggers, as each of them holds different characteristics that are particular to the context in which they were created (Findlay, The Short 159).
2.1. Employing the Wayback Machine and Digital Methods
The Internet Archive, created in 1996, is “the oldest and most comprehensive collection of archived web in the world” (Bødker & Brügger 7) , and appeared through an Alexa toolbar as a way of solving issues related to the 404 error, also known as ‘page not found’ (Rogers, Digital Methods 17). Moreover the interface search system, The Wayback Machine, was created five years later. By employing this search system as Rogers has pointed out, it is possible to not only fix the broken links, but to also create an uninterrupted surfing of the web from one page to another (Rogers, Digital Methods 57). The Wayback Machine facilitates browsing back in time through their archive to see websites as they were at that particular moment; to “surfing the web as it was”, (Rogers, Digital Methods 134). As discussed by Richard Rogers, new media scholar and Director of the Digital Methods Initiative, the Wayback Machine may
based in a certain event; build a biographical set for a page; for national heritage purposes, or autobiographically (Rogers, Doing web history):
From the standpoint of Web historiography, a website history or single-site biography may be understood as the unfolding of the history of the website, and with it a variety of stories may be told. First, the history of a website could be seen to encapsulate the larger story of the history of the Web. (6)
The Wayback Machine, can also be repurposed for specific studies in the blogosphere, by being able to access how blogs linked to one another, and for example map the blogosphere at a specific moment in time to recreate its history (Stevenson 2010; Weltevrede and Helmond 2017) or investigate the repercussions to the online structure after a historical change as 9/11 (Schneider and Foot 2004). It is also possible to narrate the story of certain media, for example how newspapers or other media outlets have adapted to the web (Bødker & Brügger 2017) . This thesis will particularly be focused on creating a collection for a particular period in the history of the web.
The Internet Archive has certain limitations in the way it stores its pages, which can bring certain impediments and problems for the researcher. Sometimes it is not possible to see images or retrieve links (Bødker & Brügger 7) . Other problems that are worth mentioning include missing dates (Rogers, Digital Methods 136), the issue that websites cannot be archived at a scale 1:1 as it they were before (Bødker & Brügger 6 ), and due to its atemporal linking, the links are sometimes captured at different moments in time (Bødker & Brügger 6).
2.2. Case study: creating a generational study of personal style blogs
In order to build a list to represent different generations as well as current and relevant bloggers, the first step was to take fashion media Fashionista’s Top Ranking of 20 of the most influential personal style bloggers of 2016. Fashionista is a U.S. based news source fashion website, and part of the company Breaking Media. Fashionista is not part of media conglomerates that handle legendary titles such as Vogue, part of Condé Nast, or Harper’s Bazaar, belonging to Hearst Media. It could therefore be said that it leans into being a more impartial voice in the fashion industry. In addition to this, they also create annual rankings specialized in the category of personal style bloggers. Their rankings are built in a holistic way, due to the distinct variables taken into examination. For the formation of the ranking used in this study, Fashionista has stated to have considered social media following and engagement (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Pinterest), website traffic, if the blogger has personal lines (brand extensions), ‘It’ factor (bloggers who work with higher-end brands and are most popular among advertisers), and headlines in Google News searches.
After taking this ranking, each blog was organised per date of creation. The Wayback Machine was then used to go back in time to the first post registered in the archive, to retrieve the blogs linked in their blogrolls. For instance, if the blog was officially launched in 2007 but there is no record in the archive, then 2008 would be used. Subsequently, the Digital Methods Triangulation tool was used to spot the ones in common among the 2 blogrolls. The purpose of this was to be able to retrieve blogs in older generations. To build the final selection, according to year of creation a maximum of two blogs per date were selected and preference was given to those who held a higher ranking on the original list. The objective was to have a variety of years, which could mean there is a possibility to appreciate generational changes. The final list contains thirteen blogs comprising from 2006 to 2012 and their links can be seen in the appendix:
Susie Lau, ‘Style Bubble’ (2006); Gala Gonzalez, ‘Amlul by Gala Gonzalez’ and Rumi Neely, ‘Fashion Toast’ (2007); Aimee Song, ‘Song of Style’ and Liz Cherkasova, ‘Late Afternoon’ (2008); Chiara Ferragni, ‘The Blonde Salad’ and Julie Sariñana, ‘Sincerely Jules’ (2009); Wendy Nguyen, ‘Wendy’s lookbook’ and Jessica Stein, ‘Tuula Vintage’ (2010); Kristina Bazan, ‘Kayture’ and Julia Engel ‘Gal Meets Glam’ (2011); Negin Mirsalehi, ‘Negin Mirsalehi’ and Helena Bordon, ‘Helena Bordon’ (2012).
The following process was to manually select two captures per year for each blogger. In the cases when the capture presented only two posts for example, more than two captures had to be retrieved to have more posts available. When possible, the captures would be retrieved months apart from each other during the year, in order to take variety in content of time. For the exploration of the interface, the capture at the end of the year was taken into consideration to observe the most recent format.
2.3. The elements of the blog. Visual and textual content analysis.
As stated previously, the method of this thesis is taken place in two phases, one being the analysis of formats and the second in content.
Exploring the formats
For this part of the study the different elements described in the subchapter of ‘The Anatomy of a blog’ were explored in the formats, by observing their presence or absence per year. Taking into consideration the research stated in Chapter 1, differences in certain features can help understand further the purpose that the blog or the author might have had (Lomborg). As Helmond points out in 2008, the additions of certain elements for example, can even show the deepening relationship between blogs and search engines (44).
