Category: Opinion

Not For Sale

not for sale All Saints

A recent encounter with Hunter Boots, and their generosity and flexibility in sending a pair of boots out for someone other than myself (to be covered in a post soon) brought me to a realisation – being able to treat the people I care about is one of my favourite things about blogging. My mum has always loved the Mulberry x LFW totes, and being able to send her them is a great feeling. Similarly, I love being able to help out friends and upcoming brands by sending some traffic their way. It’s for this reason that I’m writing about a couple of things that I’ve been struggling with lately.

Blog Advertising

blog advertising billboard

Before you freak out, I’m not talking about banner advertising on blogs. I’m fine with that, which should be clear because it’s something I do. What I’m referring to is the strange trend of beauty and fashion bloggers selling ad space to other bloggers for tiny sums like £2 per month. Is £2 really going to make THAT much of a difference to your bank account?

I know the Google isn’t a big fan of link swapping, but surely listing some blogs that you actually like on your blog (without charging them the price of a Euromillions ticket…) will result in some of them listing you back – this feels like a much nicer way to feature other bloggers on your page than charging them. To me, charging other up and coming bloggers for space on your own blog just doesn’t feel like it’s particularly in the spirit of sister/brother/whateverhood. But worse than that, it opens the door to other Big Bads*…

*Yup, Buffy reference.

Pay to Play

I think the reason I’m not a fan of charging other bloggers to appear on your blog is that it creates the impression that the blogosphere is for sale. The rise of shysters and scammers targeting bloggers is on the rise – I get emails from SEO ‘guru’s on an almost daily basis, and far too many of them make promises I know they can’t keep. However, I have no doubt that younger and/or more naive bloggers are falling for their tricks.

Unfortunately, even magazines which claim to have the best interests of bloggers at heart are not immune to the lure of bloggers with deep pockets. A friend forwarded me an email she’d received from Company Magazine about a plan to charge bloggers £100 to plug their blog in future issues.

Screen shot 2013-03-20 at 20.13.26

My friend also noted how cleverly this call-out to ‘their fave bloggers’ is tied to the upcoming awards. I’ve never trusted glossy magazine awards because of their voting system – although I’d love to make the claim that the choice of past winners has been influenced by whether or not they’ve previously paid for advertising space, I can’t. The lovely Stephanie (of Faiiint) was kind enough to scan some past advertising campaigns for me – none to date have featured bloggers. However, what about that mysterious voting system? Hundreds of blogs are nominated, then a shortlist is chosen. Voting then reopens to determine a final winner. But what gets you shortlisted? I know people who run hugely popular blogs, but have never made it through to the shortlist stage. Why is that?

I suspect, though can’t prove, that there is an element of favouritism and willingness to play along – I’d be interested to know how many shortlisted bloggers wrote something about the awards of featured them in some other meaningful way. And now paid advertising is involved? Well, I’ll be keeping a very close eye on how Company’s advertorial sections match up with their award shortlists.

Beyond the potential for foul play, I see at least two problems with charging bloggers to appear in print:

1) Appearing in print is lovely. It gives you something to tweet pictures of and proves to your mum that, actually, all that time you waste on Twitter does actually result in some kinda cool stuff. However, it simply doesn’t generate any traffic. Ok, it generates SOME traffic, but a small mention in an article reaches such a tiny percentage of a publication’s readership that expecting much more than 100 visits off the back of it is unrealistic. Do you really want to pay £1 per visit?

2) The scheme is totally backwards. By revamping to appeal to bloggers, Company has done a nice job of making a niche for itself and captivating a readership. They recently put out a ‘superblogger issue’ and one presumes that these bloggers were paid for their involvement for this. On the off chance they weren’t, that’s a heck of a lot of free labour the mag managed to get. If they WERE, the repercussions are just as damning. The message is clear – the magazine values traffic and how well established you are as far more important than the uniqueness of your voice or how compelling what you have to say is. In other words, they are perfectly willing to exploit their ‘fave bloggers’.

I’ve stood by, occasionally even partaking in them out of curiosity, and watched bloggers frantically try to generate enough votes for themselves to win an award from a glossy magazine. The ceremonies are ritzy (plus, y’know, free bar) enough, and the whole thing has seemed fairly harmless to date – the mags get traffic and the winners get a nice badge to put on the side of their blog. However, the idea of paying a magazine to play (and potentially to win) is a very ugly one.

I’m not one to tell people what to do – if bloggers want to sell ad space on their blogs to other bloggers and use the money to buy promotion from Company (it’ll only take them fifty months to earn enough!) instead of relying on their voice and their passion to build a following, that’s up to them. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if we banded together, promoted the blogs we genuinely read, and said ‘actually, we’re not for sale.’

N.B. I know this post will be divisive, and I don’t mean to antagonise anyone for no reason. If you sell ad space on your blog to other bloggers, that’s fine – I know just as well as anyone that you gotta pay the bills. I feel like all of this needed to be said, and I suspect that I burned my bridges with Company – c.f. this post – a long time ago. To any other magazines (/editors, writers etc) reading, I promise I’m not always such a nightmare.

On LFW A/W ’13…

back to the future II fashion

Despite a million Twitter hoaxes (seems like it anyway…) to the contrary, it’s just over two and a half years until the date that Marty McFly arrives in the future. Amidst all the poor grammar infested ‘It’s <insert year here> Where Is My Hoverboard Mattel?!’ Facebook groups and, admittedly interesting, articles about predictions Back to the Future II made that came true, sits the fact that haven’t made half the progress that Hollywood thought we would.

I can’t think of anywhere that this rings more true than the world of fashion. In case you live under a rock, or don’t follow anyone interesting on Twitter (which, let’s face it, is basically the same thing), it was London Fashion Week a couple of weeks ago. And I was nowhere to be found. Ignoring the fact that I’ve spent most of the past two days feeling flu-tastic and doped up on Lemsip, I wasn’t really that psyched for LFW anyway. And I think I’ve finally figured out the reason why.

Almost every comment about LFW…scratch that, almost every comment about mainstream fashion in general contains the word ‘revival’ – everything these days seems to be ‘Gatsby-esque’ or ’60s influenced’ or ‘rave inspired’. With the exception of fringe designers like J.W. Anderson, who recently made headlines with a line of skirts and dresses for men, mainstream fashion is starting to feel stale.

Back to the Future II fashion

It’s difficult to come up with my reasoning for the above statement, especially given I’m not sure whether I’m the only one feeling it or not. My argument that ‘everything is harking back to something else’ wasn’t even for my friend Sian, who always steers clear of LFW. ‘Well, yes,’ she said, ‘but that’s always been the case. So it can’t just be that.’* So what IS it then?

* I still think the BTTF II sketch above, which talks about ‘having no basis in anyone else’s work’, is quite revealing – it’s different to imagine any contemporary designer saying they’re doing something that’s never been done before and actually believing it.

With practically every show, cupcake, backstage makeup artistry and goodie bag Instagrammed and blogged to death within five minutes of them ending. I often found myself thinking ‘ugh, why are people still talking about that?’ about certain outfits, before realising they’d made their debut only a couple of hours ago. Yes, this may be true of all news in the 21st century, but the desire of bloggers to casually mention that you’re ‘FROW-ing’ on every social media channel they’ve used since the age of five means it’s hitting fashion pretty badly.

Stay fresh, however hard that is. Otherwise, you might get left behind…

Stop saying manorexia.

This post is written in response to this Daily Mail article and comments from WIWT founder Poppy Dinsey. I hope my tone doesn’t come across as too combative towards her, because I lav the Poppy. As for the mainstream reaction towards anorexia? All of the combative.

EDIT: To be clear, Poppy did not use and has never used the term ‘manorexia’; that’s something I came across in the Mail. Not sure whether or not it originated with them.

manorexia debate YSL

Of the caustic terms that permeate contemporary debate, ‘manorexia’ is one of the worst. Anyone who’s read this blog is probably already aware of my disdain for the term ‘metrosexual’ (read why here), but manorexia is ten times worse. Barring a couple of isolated examples (postnatal depression springs to mind), I fail to see what gender, race or class have to do with mental illness.

I’ve never really had any issues with my weight, but I can’t imagine it being easy for men to deal with having anorexia. It’s traditionally seen as a feminine illness, to the extent that the ‘ideal’ anorexic body conflicts directly with the traditional ‘masculine’ body, i.e. broad shoulders, muscular arms etc. In this way, anorexia not only others you from your gender, but also from your sexuality. I say this as weakness and limp wristed-ness has been historically (not to mention ridiculously) associated with homosexuality.

To go one step further and label their *version* of the disease as manorexia feels seems to completely trivialise it – it reeks of punny newspaper headlines and the idea that ‘it’s like what girls get, only different’. It’s on par with labelling someone’s depression as ‘a bit of a downer’, or calling sexual deviance ‘just a phase’.

Although newspaper columns, Twitter and website articles are awash with women, and men (myself included), highlighting the fact that the trend of calling curvy women ‘real women’ is not only ludicrous, all too many social media users seemed to misinterpret Poppy Dinsey when she tweeted the following:

Poppy Dinsey manorexia YSL tweet
Despite being directed at the fashion house rather than the model, Dinsey’s tweet led to many of her followers commenting that the model looks ‘disgusting’, something Poppy later protested about. She has since tweeted me remarking that she spends a lot of time arguing that all women are real women. It’s worth noting that my response is mostly motivated by the Daily Mail’s response to the story (link at the top of this post) and the issue in more general terms.

Yes, the fashion industry has traditionally been dominated by underweight models. However, does that mean that their presence should be outlawed? Once upon a time, religion was compulsory – does that mean that everyone should now be Atheist? Homosexuality was once illegal and regarded as a mental illness, does that mean everyone should be gay now? Jumping from one pole to another is never a sensible way to handle something, because it always comes across as disingenuous. Not to mention how impractical implementing either of the above would be…Admittedly, these debates aren’t quite the same thing, as there is a medical risk associated with being clinically underweight.

However, my problem with the ‘real women’ debate and the ‘banorexia’ (a term I think I’ve just invented) movement is that it insists that skinny people aren’t ‘real’. By excluding size zero models, the mainstream media creates the idea that anorexia/thinness is wrong. We’re already seeing this force the culture to move underground. I hesitate to use the term culture to describe a group of people who have what is still widely believed to be a mental illness, but that’s what’s happening – ‘pro ana’ blogs, tweeters and Instagram accounts collate anorexic imagery and intensify it by making it the only point of focus, which is far less healthy than a media that features all different body shapes.

female body shapes

Please don’t take from this post that I’m pro-anorexia, because that’s not the case. What I am tetchy about is labelling a skinny male model ‘shockingly’ thin and ‘disgusting’, especially given that we know nothing about his mental state or eating habits, because it drives a stake between people (who may already be on their way to looking like this boy) and normality. Whether their thinness is due to extreme dieting or their genes, they may feel that they have no choice but to embrace an increasingly toxic underground movement that promotes anorexia as aspirational and beautiful.

Of course, the big comeback to this is that allowing images of extremely thin people in the media distorts young people’s perception of beauty. While that may be true for a tiny minority who already have a predisposition to eatings disorders, it simply isn’t true for 99% of people. I had the following debate with Poppy on Facebook, which I think bears repeating here -

Screen shot 2013-01-21 at 20.14.43
Evidently, I am part of that 99% – yes, pictures of Taylor Lautner, Zac Efron and all those dudes on Abercrombie bags motivate me to hit the gym harder, but never to the extent that I’d start taking steroids or gulping down raw eggs every morning. I’m sure the same is true of most women – they might wish their face looked a bit more like Emma Stone’s, or their rack looked a bit more like Beyoncé’s, but they probably just…well, get on with things because sometimes eating half a tub of Ben and Jerry’s is more fun than going to the gym. Something I know from experience.

brad pitt fight club body
One day, Brad. One day.

So what will help that 1%, the people who are susceptible to images promoting extreme thinness? It’s definitely not labelling them ‘freaks’ or ‘disgusting’. Once we know for sure that someone’s emaciated state is caused by crash dieting, it’s time to raise the idea that they may have a problem. But just as you wouldn’t tell someone with depression to cheer up, this can’t be as simple as saying ‘eat something!’ As for exactly what the answer is, I’m not sure. If I did, I’d probably be writing this piece somewhere a lot cooler than my blog.

Fashion: Not Just For Girls

Unless you’re living under a rock, you’ve probably seen Brad Pitt as the new face of Chanel No. 5. If not, here it is:

The negative response the campaign has had from a lot of fashion bloggers and industry pundits doesn’t really surprise me. Responses tend to fall into one of two camps – ‘lol he looks like a tramp’ and ‘OMG, I LUFF BRAD’. In my opinion, both of these responses completely miss the point of the advert. I keep swinging between two responses of my own, and until all the constituent parts of the commercial are released I doubt I’ll be able to.

Theory number one – It’s worth stating that the second part of the new Chanel No. 5 movie (embedded above) still contains a ‘Chanel girl’ – positing Brad Pitt as the ‘star’ of the first advert then having him appear less in the second, his presence occasionally reduced to a mere voiceover, is indicative of the fact that the Chanel girl overshadows everything, even Brad Pitt. If I’m on the right track, the next part of the commercial will presumably feature even less of Pitt, perhaps leaving only his voice.

Theory number two (and the one I prefer) – To those who claim that Brad Pitt isn’t ‘a fit’ with Chanel, it should be pointed out that a big part of Chanel’s history is stripping away extravagant and overwrought aesthetics. Pitt’s masculine ‘au naturale’ look is a perfect contrast to Nicole Kidman’s OTT ‘I’m a daaancer’ advert. In this way, Pitt’s individualism and self confidence embody a masculine reworking of the Chanel girl. Pitt must have been aware that the advert would kick up controversy and parodies (…inevitable), but he did it anyway. Though the $7 million cheque in his pocket probably helped.

I’ve previously written about my experiences as a straight man in fashion (that post is probably still my favourite thing I’ve written on this blog), but recently I’ve noticed that things are changing. Pitt being chosen as the face of Chanel No. 5. David Beckham appearing on the cover of Elle Magazine. Articles appearing in this season’s Shortlist MODE supplement about men flirting with extravagant fashion.  All of these are indicative of the fact that the voice of straight men in fashion is getting louder.

I’ve long has issues with the word ‘metrosexual’ – it’s insulting to men, both straight and gay. It designates fashion and grooming as being inherently feminine, thus associating homosexuality with being somehow girly or sissy. It also implies that men with an interest in fashion are a bit ‘wrong’ and can’t really be straight, so they need to be labelled something else. This is incredibly damaging to young straight men who are interested in fashion in that it can lead them to question their sexuality and identity. Weirdly, the show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy actually went a long way towards dispelling myths about homosexuality – the contrast between Carson and Jai’s tendency towards effeminacy and Thom, Ted and Kyan’s fairly masculine natures served as a reminder that homosexuality and femininity aren’t mutually exclusive. Excusing the odd joke about checking the straight guys out in the shower, the Queer Eye guys were never really that ‘gay’ – they’re just well groomed, stylishly dressed men who happen to sleep with men.

Something that appears in most fashion magazines that really frustrates me is the ever present ‘ask the bloke’ section. The name and aim may vary from mag to mag, but there is inevitably a column in which men offer up their opinion on trends only to be picked apart by industry experts. The whole experience is not only incongruous – Page 4: Laugh at what these ridiculous men said about mullet skirts!! Page 6: How to keep a man interested by dressing slutty!! – but also incredibly distasteful. There have been a couple of occasions where people have made remarks to me like ‘interesting opinion, for a guy’. I’m not one to get on a soapbox, but if wolf whistling at women and comments about how women don’t understand the offside rule aren’t ok, then neither are articles about hot guys we wish had fashion blogs (ok, ok, not quite a fair comparison, plus the article is much less shallow that the title suggests) or the assumption that a man’s opinion on fashion is less valuable than a woman’s.

But lately, the tide has been turning. I’ve done a couple of freelance styling projects (no mega-brands, just some chilled out advice) recently and was told that I was picked not only because of my honesty and frankness, but also because I have a solid opinion on most trends. This is something a lot of fashion bloggers seem to lack – they sit on the fence until a consensus has been reached about whether or not something is ‘in’ (usually relying on Company Magazine to declare it so) before they play their hand. As anyone who reads this blog knows, I’ll always happily put my cards on the table. ‘Do you think that’s because I’m a guy?’ I asked a friend I was helping to pick out an outfit. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘I think it’s because you have good instincts, and I trust them.’ Then I made a joke about us not being on an after-school special and we went back to chugging white wine spritzers.

Fashion is becoming more ‘unisex’ in other ways too – I was recently at the My Celebrity Fashion relaunch in Hoxton, and got quite a shock when I left. ‘Let me grab you one of the men’s gift bags!’ chirped a smiley PR lady. A MEN’S GIFT BAG. Granted, the only difference is that it had a tie in as well as the other stuff, but still! Since then I’ve been to a couple of events where they’ve had gift bags for the men in attendance as well as the women, but kudos to MCF for being the first one that I encountered.

Of course, revolution isn’t just about attitudes; even clothes themselves are changing to blur the lines of gender in fashion. Take, for example, Karl Lagerfeld’s recent capsule collection for Selfridges, differentiated only by fit. Other than that, both the guys’ and girls’ versions are identical -

Maybe that’s the revelation here. I frequently joke that I’m the only straight male fashion blogger in the world, but the world is changing. Teenage boys all over the world are opening copies of Vogue (which might just as easily be their own as their girlfriend’s, boyfriend’s or mother’s), think ‘that’s a beautiful dress’ and not feel the need to question their identity or their sexuality. What a time that will be.

Shit Fashion Bloggers Do: Dealing With PRs

Because dealing with PRs is forever one of the most contentious issues in blogging, I though I’d put my spin on things. A lot of more established bloggers forget that, once upon a time, starting to get emails from PRs is actually a nice thing – it shows that, somehow or another, you’ve been recognised as having a voice and implies you’re doing something right.

Well, as Taking Back Sunday once sung, don’t let it go to your head. I’ve seen a ton of girls who’ve been blogging for about six weeks and get this idea in her head that Chanel should be sending them an umbrella as soon as there’s a cloud in the sky, and that Oliver Peoples’ PR department should be sending free sunglasses the second that cloud disappears. To those girls, I would say this -
1) They don’t know you exist.
2) They don’t care you exist.

Fluffy Fashion Beans (or whatever that, no doubt, derivative and cliched blog name is) only has 4 GFC readers and its author only has 104 Twitter followers, and you have to do a hell of a lot more than that before the superbrands come knocking at your virtual door.

PR is a business. Unless sending you a gift is going to result in at least two sales, there isn’t any point in doing it. Shocking though this may be to some bloggers, brand PRs aren’t there just to help people get a new wardrobe for free. Yes, it’s frustrating that some bloggers are like ‘LOOK AT THIS OUTFIT MADE ENTIRELY OUT OF GIFTED STUFF, LOL’, but if you’re that bothered about lining your pockets with free stuff, you should probably reconsider why you started blogging in the first place.

All too often I see bloggers bitching about PRs on Twitter, sometimes even namechecking the brands and individuals involved. On a scale of 1 to HORRIBLE IDEA, this is about an 8. (Well, except for the one by this blogger, because it made me laugh endlessly.) Yes, PRs can sometimes be massively annoying. Like sending you emails that start ‘dear blogger’ and end with ‘when can I expect this to go live?’. But just as you wouldn’t (I assume…) spit in a snooty shop assistant’s face, you shouldn’t email a PR with a massive rant. Why?

1) There’s a person at the other end, one who probably hates their day job (I’m assuming again) as much as you do. Imagine how soul sucking it must be to spend all day forwarding ‘press’ releases about stuff even they’re not excited about.
2) They talk. I’m friends with enough PR peeps (hell, even my dad is one of them) to know that they’re not exactly a quiet bunch. They sometimes make ME seem like a mute. They also, just like bloggers do, have a bit of a pack mentality. Mess with one of them, and it’s taken as an insult by all of them. Tread with care.

A while back I heard a story (from a PR…of course) about a blogger who’s pretty well known. She started firing off these snotty emails to PRs saying how lame their events were and asking to be taken off their lists, she had a semi-public spat with a paper who supposedly ‘implied’ that she lied about her stats and she now insists on being called a journalist, not a blogger. Even though the main place she does her ‘journalism’ is a…err, blog.

Seriously, I thought this trite sense of self importance was reserved for characters in Gossip Girl. I had my photo taken by a magazine once, does that make me a model? I cooked some spaghetti last night, I’m only responding to chef now. One day I’d like to have a regular column in a fashion magazine or something, but even then I doubt I’d insist that people refer to me as a journalist – I’m officially, and you can quote me on this, ok being referred to as a blogger. You only have to look at the comments on just about any article about fashion bloggers to realise that it’s this perceived attitude problem that turns the general public, as well as a lot of PRs, against fashion bloggers. Don’t give them any more ammo.

So, yes, it may be annoying when a PR emails you something starting ‘dear blogger’ or expects you to post about some fairly mundane product or invites you to an event that doesn’t even have a free bar (shock horror). But remember, there are newbies out there just wishing for emails like that to start arriving.

The Shape of Punk to Come


Pretty in punk. The punk playlist (one that would make Fat Mike spin in his oversized grave. If he’s dead yet…). ‘Add a touch of punk chic with blah blah blah’. I see it so often, it’s a wonder that the misappropriation and misdefining of the words punk, grunge and emo can even fill me with rage anymore. But, somehow, they do.Once upon a time, punk meant something. No, I don’t mean the sort of pseudo anarchistic bullshit put out by bands like The Sex Pistols (created by manager Malcolm McLaren with the sole intention of creating controversy, with Johnny Rotten leaving the band when he discovered that the band was as big a manufactured fraud as Leona Lewis), which is about as well thought out and meaningful as someone buying a V For Vendetta mask and deciding they’re a member of Anonymous.

Punk was never (just) about making a scene. The motivations behind punk vary from making a statement about gender (c.f. the asexual antics of Joan Jett, who refused to let the fact that she was female define her musical identity) to defying social conventions – here I’m thinking of the cathartic lyrics of Minor Threat and the birth of the straight edge movement. The medium of punk and screamo music may be distorted guitars and tight black clothes, but they are never the message.


From about 2000 onwards, all of that passion and meaning started being stripped away. When Versace released their collection inspired by Fight Club, they took something visceral and counter cultural and turned it into something devoid of substance. While I wouldn’t particularly recommend starting up a fight club or burning a lye kiss onto your hand (both of which men did in droves did after Fight Club was released) I will forever have more respect for those who did that than industry airheads who thought sewing razorblades into a shirt made ‘like, such a statement.’

While there’s something brash and Fight Club-esque about brands like The Ragged Priest (who, admittedly, I kinda like) buying up vintage denim, tie-bleaching it, putting some spikes on it and ripping out the labels, only to export it back to mainstream stores with a hugely inflated price tag, I hate the way it commodifies the DIY ethos of punk and skramz. Almost as much as I hate girls who wear Ramones t-shirts and don’t know any of their songs besides Blitzkrieg Bop.


A couple of years back, Vice published a piece about leather jackets. The piece really resonated with me because of the way each jacket seemed to tell a story, which is (to me) what fashion is all about. Yes, Jeremy Scott’s winged Adidas shoes are pretty out there, but I like them because they remind me of Hermes (that’s the winged messenger god, not the brand). They send an implicit message about the desire to reach new heights, and delivering divine messages. Yes, if I ever manage to scrimp together the cash to buy a pair, I’ll probably joke that they make me feel like a 21st century Hermes with a blog.

The current trend of buying studded…well, everything, completely undermines the impetus behind it. Manufactured studs, spikes and acid washes that come as standard are truly style without substance. And that’s not punk.

Shit Fashion Bloggers Do: My Week on Instagram

There are few phrases in the English language that turn me off more than ‘My Week on Instagram’. It truly is the blogging equivalent of ‘honey, I have some bad news about my herpes test’. I’m not saying that every blogger crafts My Week on Instagram posts to make you compare your life to how amazing theirs is, I’m just saying that pretty much every blogger crafts ‘My Week on Instagram posts to make you compare your life to how amazing theirs is.

My week on Instagram, guyz!

The most ridiculous thing is that if you regularly read someone’s blog, you probably already follow them on Twitter and Instagram. Yum, thrice digested content that wasn’t even that interesting to start with. The only thing that feels worse is watching Hollyoaks every night of the week then watching the omnibus at the weekend because you’re too hungover to go find the remote.

Unfortunately, I can’t even really be angry about people using Instagram as a showcase for how cool their life is, because I often find myself doing it too. I feel far more of a compulsion to check in on Foursquare every time I go somewhere remotely cool (Gaucho, Shoreditch House, whatever) than if I’m popping to the shops.

So why do we feel the need to present this enhanced image of ourselves? Easy – because I’d like people to think that I’m an interesting, ‘finger on the pulse’ kinda guy, rather than a lanky wallflower wearing a Joy Division t-shirt with a baked beans stain on it. Even though I fall into the latter category about 90% of the time…The same is true of Instagram – aside from there often being a sense of obligation to do so out of gratitude to brands etc there’s a latent desire to take pictures of launch parties you’ve been invited to and freebies you’ve been sent because, if you make it look like this is just par for the course for you, the invites and gifts will keep on coming.

But the fact your life is like Carrie Bradshaw Jr’s isn’t why people read your blog – sure, living vicariously has its moments, but people generally tire of it very quickly. If people didn’t get invited to a launch party, they don’t want to see pictures of the canapes and cocktails that they didn’t get to drink. They’d probably rather actually see some close-up photos of the product or read about a conversation you had with the creator.

It takes more than nine sepia photos to tell people about your week.

Shit Fashion Bloggers Do: Not Another Outfit Post…

A question: Have you ever seen a blog post like this?

Shirt: Gap. Jeans: Abercrombie & Fitch. Watch: Limit
Shirt: Gap. Jeans: Abercrombie & Fitch. Watch: Limit
Shirt: Gap. Jeans: Abercrombie & Fitch. Watch: Limit
Shirt: Gap. Jeans: Abercrombie & Fitch. Watch: Limit

‘Hi guyz, here are some photos of me looking fierce with my new Strobe watch by Limit. Hope u all had a good day xo’

So back to that question at the top of the page. Ever seen a blog post like this? Wait, no need to reply, I already know the answer. It’s ‘OF COURSE I HAVE, STU.’ Yup, poorly written #OOTD posts with eleven photos that are just barely perceptibly different (seriously, it’s like a game of spot the difference sometimes) are the bread and butter of far too many fashion bloggers.

Yeah, yeah, I get it – it’s hard to write something nice about every bit of swag you’re getting sent by PRs (first world probs, much?), but I know I’m not the only one who’s bored to death by this. On the off chance people make it through all the same-y photos, six words isn’t really going to sell them on a product. Which is why the PR sent you it, after all…

What to do? Well, making your photoshoot more interesting is a good place to start. Take The Hundreds, for example. For their Autumn (/Fall, whatever) 2012 lookbook, they did a photoshoot with a wolf. A FUCKING WOLF.

I literally can’t think of anything cooler than that. But you don’t need to look up your nearest husky sanctuary down the road just yet. You can do something much simpler (and less dangerous…) than this, and it still be interesting. Take Katy‘s outfit posts, which usually make use of mirror effects.

AND, shock horror, she actually has an opinion on the clothes she writes about! You know, one other than ‘this is nice.’

I know I’m going close to the bone by writing a series called ‘Shit Fashion Bloggers Do’, but it’s done with love. Seriously. A blog is your space, and it’s up to you what you do with it, but unless you do something interesting or inspiring with it you run the risk of becoming absolutely replaceable.

I was recently speaking with the founder of a fashion company about whether or not, with so many teenagers and twentysomethings getting into blogging, the market is going to become oversaturated. We both agreed that it’s probably inevitable, and that the face of blogging will undergo some kind of change over the next couple of years. And, whatever that change might be, ‘hope u all had a good day xo’ isn’t going to get you your next gig.

‘Til next time.

Galaxy Sweaters & See Tickets Fiascos

I totally want this. It’s like galaxy leggings, except for guys (apparently galaxy leggings aren’t for guys…). Had to play a quick game of currency roulette when I read that the price was 179,00zł -literally could have been anywhere between a tenner and six grand. Turns out it’s only £34. I can definitely justify that, right? Sugar Pills have some crazy prints for both guys and girls (and I mean crazy, they make Mary Katrantzou look like a nun), definitely worth checking them out.

No, I’m not saying the boys from Alexisonfire are fugly, but the experience I had this morning definitely was. Despite being online the second tickets for their farewell tour went on sale, See Tickets told me there were none available for 5 minutes before telling me that, actually, they were all sold out. I also tried Ticketmaster, HMV Tickets and all the usual haunts, but to no avail. Oh, but reselling sites like Viagogo and Get Me In somehow managed to score hundreds of tickets to sell at three times face value. Brilliant. Luckily, I was able to snag a standing ticket for the second show that was announced later in the morning, but I’m painfully aware that I’m one of the lucky few to get a second chance. Clearly the episode of Dispatches that dealt with the scuzzy, back-handed tactics employed by tickets sites didn’t actually do much to fix the problem. And boy, does it need fixing.

Post-Apocolympics.

It took most Londoners a while to warm to the Olympics. More weeks than I care to remember were spent bemoaning debts, security concerns, travel problems and all those other signs of impending doom that LOCOG were bringing down on us. But then something happened. When the much-feared multicultural, multi-lingual swarm of locusts finally descended, we all realised that they weren’t locusts at all. They were people. Smiling, happy people who were genuinely excited to be in London. From here, things only got better. The opening ceremony was pretty cool (although I must have missed the Harry Potter movie in which Julie Andrews kicked Voldemort’s ass), we won some medals, we suddenly had no qualms about gathering in pubs and living rooms to collectively cheer on plucky individuals we’d never really heard of a month ago.

A confession – I’m not in love with London. I’ve lived here for just over a year and I frequently find it frantic, caustic and unfriendly. And I’m not the only one – I recently read an article warning visiting Americans to make a note of any friendly pubs they found, as they’re far from the norm. A friend from Newcastle recently returned from an ill-fated trip down south, vowing never to return again (she definitely won’t succeed – she’d miss me too much). Don’t get me wrong; I’ve met some wonderful, interesting, welcoming people in the past twelve months that I’m honoured just to have stood in the same room as. But that doesn’t change the fact that, at its core, the city is depressed. Except that the London I’ve seen in the past sixteen days isn’t the one I’m used to.

Not too many years back, I had a bit of an episode. My personality has an obsessive compulsive element that threatened to disrupt my life by pulling my mind into a depressive corner, which isn’t the easiest place to escape from. Though I now consider myself to be ‘fine’ (aside from getting irritated when people think having their desk organised is ‘LYKE SO OCD’) I feel much more attuned to the emotions of others and can tell pretty easily when people are in a dark place. A huge percentage of Londoners seem to be suffering from a chronic version of what I suffered from. The feeling that nothing is ever good enough, that nagging feeling that everything is bound to go wrong, is written off as British modesty or self deprecation. Self-medication with drugs and alcohol is downplayed as part of the ‘work hard, play hard’ dialectic. Introversion, unwillingness to make eye contact with strangers and a compulsive need to be forever wearing headphones (iPod, therefore iAm…) all fall under the heading of the ‘urban experience’. The undercurrents of anger and despair, that erupted during last year’s London riots, have merely been glossed over.

In the past two weeks, I have seen a change. Team GB, the Olympic spirit, whatever you want to call it, has brought us together. That may sound clichéd, but it’s the truth. Epic rivalries between nations have displaced the smaller scale arguments that plague day-to-day life, and they are good natured and respectful instead of petty and acidic. Youngsters have seen that, whatever background they’re from, they can make good. And no, I don’t believe that’s just wishful thinking – with the latest study estimating that 90% of Brits watched at least some of the Olympics, there must have been a positive impact. Sure, all of the bad stuff is still there – recession, the daily grind, the fifteen things the Daily Mail found today that give you cancer – but everyone’s been more willing to just…make the best of things.


Just because the Olympics is over doesn’t mean that we have to go back to the way that things were. True, we’re off to a bad start with that Closing Ceremony (I think we set the world record for most whingy tweets per minute last night), but it doesn’t have to be the end. If we can hang on to that thing that makes us want to be friends with strangers rather than ignoring them and that sense that, actually, everything probably WILL be ok in the end then…well, the rest is easy.

Westfield London is still running their #IWASTHERE competition until the end of this week. If you have any inspiring London 2012 stories to share, check out the deets HERE and tweet them HERE. You could win £25,000 for your trouble, which is a pretty spicy meatball. Even if you don’t win it’s still worth a go; might make you feel all warm and fuzzy.