Hello to everyone taking part in Sarah of At The Beauty Desk’s “Let’s Talk Blog Challenge”! Into Week 5 now and this week’s theme is very chatty indeed, in a sort of debate on the fashion magazine and the fashion blog. What I will discuss are my views on the pros & cons of both the fashion mag and the blog, and although there probably should be one winner, I actually think both need to go hand-in-hand to be a joint winner.
The Fashion Magazine
Fashion magazines have been around for decades now, even centuries. Fashion bible Vogue first released its debut issue in 1892, that’s 122 years ago! And since Anna Wintour’s position as Vogue’s Editor in 1988, this legendary magazine hasn’t stopped; spanning from Teen Vogue to multinational editions like Vogue China, Vogue UK and Vogue Thailand, which first published its debut issue last year. Fashion magazines are extremely important, not just for the fashion industry but the media industry for many, many reasons. One of the biggest pros to a printed fashion magazine are jobs. People are employed to write articles, to take photos, to be art director’s, researchers and even advertisizers, and they all get paid to make the moneys and put the bread on the table. This is a really important factor to the magazine, and merging the fashion & media industry is just a given in this day and age.
And in Ireland, it’s even more important to have fashion magazines. The Irish nation is making it big in the fashion industry across the Emerald Isle but also across the globe, and it’s important to include such people and the events which we create in a nifty magazine. Irish leading fasion magazines like Stellar Magazine, Image, Irish Tattler and even KISS are always bringing us the latest of what’s new, what’s good and where we can actually buy it, in Ireland. This is something which had annoyed me when I was younger, reading Cosmopolitan and Teen Vogue. Yes the mags are great, but we can’t necessarily buy what we buy in the UK/US magazines. Queue KISS or Stellar, with their youthful and wondrous fashion stylings and relateable articles. And isn’t there something special about the language of the fashion magazine? As a serious fashion addict/enthusiast/blogger, there’s something special about reading articles and pictures in their beautifully layed out design, flicking page after page on the bus, at home or in the café with your cuppa and not looking like you’re “addicted to your phone”! I for one, am an avid buyer of Stellar, and had been of KISS, and lately am expanding to Image and have always been tempted to buy bridal mags (but I will wait until the right time!)
What’s more, when you’re in school or college and studying art, how are you going to easily create fashion mood boards or collages with your iPad or your Smartphone? You can’t, unless you go off and pay to print pages. But a magazine? An old issue of a great mag can ALWAYS come in handy, from ideas for your upcoming Debs, your graduation ball or even your wedding to decorating your scrapbook and for using in projects. Heck even if its for the tear away pages of Ryan Reynolds for Gucci or Beyoncé ads. Since the 14th Century, printing has been a large part of human life, and in Killer Fashion’s eyes, the fashion magazine won’t get replaced, and will not die any time soon.
- PROS: Jobs for magazine staff and all its contributors; physical copy that will outlast a phone battery; great for art usage, research & scrapbooking; variety of styles; and well written articles
- CONS: Prices can be steep for bigger magazines, especially imported editions; not all content is available locally; can be outdated
The Fashion Blog
Blogging is in its boom years right now. As of 20 February 2014, there are approx. 172 million blogs on Tumblr and 75.8 million WordPress blogs in existence worldwide, (We Found Love, Love Lips & Glitter and Killer Fashion are three of those!), and the figures are ever-growing. In the late 1990s, blogs became a thing, and originally were more like online diaries. I started blogging via online diaries in the mid 2000s, when I was a moody teenager who self-taught herself HTML, FTP & CSS and created my own personal blog, Solitude. As of today that blog is buried in the Internet graveyard, as fashion blogging became my passion and I no longer needed to vent. And long before Killer Fashion, I actually was a big fan art & manga-head, and had a successful blog for a good few years, Black Roses.
But fashion blogging today is becoming so, so, SO big! Not only do many of fashion websites have their own blogs with which they update us on behind-the-scenes stories, interviews & vlogs, but the fashion blogger is becoming a big part of the fashion industry, having huge influence on today’s social media-savvy “Internet kids”. Online news websites & reports notice that fashion bloggers have this phenomanel impact on readers, and fasion designers & brands see this too, taking to their own news articles and exposing said bloggers, which in turn gives said blogger even more of a boost. Filipino fashion blogger Bryanboy is a perfect example of this, with his successful blog helping him land a role on America’s Next Top Model! Other Irish examples of blog success are Her.ie and especially So Sue Me, Suzanne Jackson’s even released a book and is on a workshop tour across Ireland!
A fashion blog has great pros too, as you can be instantly up to date on fashion trends & reports, whereas the monthly magazine could be two weeks behind already even though the staff are probably going to mention it in the following month’s issue. And as a fashion blogger myself, it’s a great way to express your passion and feel appreciated with the likes, retweets, favourites and follows, and if you’re really lucky, bagging yourself an award for your blog is the ultimate icing on the cake. I have heard the argument that with fasion blogs, there’s no need for magazines, and even shops on the high street, because you can do everything online now. But we don’t live in an online-only world, we still get fit outdoors, we still eat in resatraurnts, we still have courts and juries. None of those things can be replaced by anything online, though they can be enhanced; and that’s what I feel blogs are. They are an enhancement of online fashion, and of the online fashion/media industry.
- PROS: Daily, up to date content from fashion trends to buys & bargains; beautifully designed blogs that also express one’s artistic skills as well as journalistic skills; ability to reach a vaster amount of people without distribution; free to create, free to access; self-expressionism
- CONS: Low traffic/recognition can dishearten bloggers; not always taken seriously, depending on the tone of blog; if you are your own boss, it’s easy to become lazy and not update; dishonest people can easily steal your content or ideas without notification
Killer Fashion 
Having someone like Suzanne in the media just proves that writing a blog can lead to so much and open so many opportunities. But as you said, when you have a blog and no deadlines, you can become lazy and get bloggers block along with little recognition, which is very disheartening. Blogging is a lot more hard work but I do think what you put in, you get out and the rewards can be so much better then writing for a magazine.There are so many blogger awards these days, which just proves how popular blogging has become.
Sarah
x
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Wow, you really put a lot of effort into your post! A lot of time and effort went into it. I love So Sue Me! Shes simply stunning!! Great post
Rach Xx
http://make-upyermind.blogspot.ie/
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Thanks Rach! Yeah I wasn’t entirely sure how to go about my post, so i felt this was the right direction! 🙂 Yeah Suzanne is just stunning, and she’s such a great relatable role model! xx
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