I’m so tired of the epithet “fashion bloggers”

I have never wished that my blog was written in Swedish more than I do now. Because this is one of those posts I really would have wanted to write in Swedish, but since I don’t have an arena for that I’ll take it in English. I don’t even know if this post will make any sense in other countries than Sweden but when writing this post I will have Swedish circumstances in mind.

“Fashion and design” is number two in the category list at the Swedish blog portal, after daily reflections. There are 13,691 fashion blogs registered, which represents 13,691 fashion bloggers. I write it again, fashion bloggers. It’s almost as if I shiver a bit when I write the words. Blogging about fashion is no longer something you do, it is something you are. Now I can’t say that I read a lot fashion blogs, but the perception I have got of the typical fashion blogger is a teenage blond girl who posts pictures of herself and writes about “today’s outfit”. There are also fashion bloggers at evening papers who write posts like “celebrities show their style, you decide what is working”. Fashion Bloggers are every so often mocked in other contexts and recently deepedition made a little fun of some young girls who are blogging mostly about fashion. I thought it was terribly funny and I also linked to his blog post from my blog.

Fashion Blogger has become such an epithet that no one over 25 who wants to be in a serious manner would ever want to be called a fashion blogger. At least that’s how I feel.

Now, how should the fashion industry seriously be able to break ground with social media?

I am 27 years old, have just begun my 18:th school year. I’m educated in computer technology and communication. But I happen to be interested in fashion as well, an interest that has emerged during my eleven years in the fashion industry. Last spring, I had an internship at the fashion trade magazine Habit, (probably the most serious magazine in Sweden that writes about fashion). I also have an interest in social media and how to use it as a communication tool. It may happen that I sometimes would like to blog about fashion, but of course I can’t do that because then I would be a fashion blogger which I really don’t want to be due to the above reasons.

This summer I ran a blog from the store where I am employed. My blog differed pretty much from the typical fashion blog, both linguistically and in context, but sometimes I could feel myself that – at a superficial glance – the difference was subtle. Throughout the summer, I was terrified that someone would call me a fashion blogger. To my knowledge, I managed to escape from that, perhaps thanks to the fact that the store’s target audience is slightly older than the typical “fashion blog reader” and a lot of my readers do not usually read blogs at all. In addition, the blog was time limited and I could probably never be known as “Maria – the shop blogger (butiksbloggaren)” or what I feared, “Maria – the fashion blogger”.

Sometimes I feel an anxiety over this. How do I do if I am over 25, want to be regarded as a serious communicator and blog about fashion? I have not even bothered to make a fashion category in my own blog. I would probably never use it because I can not for God’s sake be a fashion blogger.

But what is more important than my personal anxiety about this is how should the fashion industry do it? If they in a personal way want to blog about their business without being “fashion bloggers” with everything the epithet implies. I do not know but I hope for a change and maybe the change will come in a natural way when the young fashion bloggers get older, wiser and are on the labour market.

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Words by Maria