This book provides an early examination of personal style blogging. Drawing on a multi-method approach, including digital ethnography, interviews and textual analysis, this study argues that personal style blogs provided a meaningful early space for the performance of stylish selves, and evaluates the criticism bloggers received from legacy media due to their perceived outsider status and, often, their youth and gender.
At the same time, this work maps the shift from first wave style blogging, characterised by its community feel and uncommercialised enthusiasm for fashion, to second wave style blogging, which quickly transformed into fashion influencing, and reflected the aesthetics and consumptive logics of commercial fashion media. Weaving theories from performance studies, feminist literature, sociology and fashion studies, Personal Style Blogs provides a vital record of an ephemeral but enormously influential independent fashion media practice.
