Hallway Fashion

Starting a blog is a hard thing to do. When I was younger blogs were only found in the form of personal diaries you, for some reason, decided to post online for everybody and their neighbor to read. I was one of those people. I wrote a personal diary on a Web site called Teen.com. It was actually quite successful - I got fan mail and everything.

Well, nowadays everybody's got a blog - and it's not enough just to put your thoughts out there for the entire world to read. Now you have to have a niche. A hook. Something that drives people to read it regularly. So I was looking at different blogs online, to try and find out what makes a blog successful. Do I need to make a theme? Tie it down with specifics? Then I looked at a couple fashion blogs ...

Fashion blogs are the epitome of the narcissistic self-love that has come to embody so many blogs (and people) over the past few years. Take the latest issue of Nylon magazine, throw in a young adult eager to become the next Kate Moss or Kanye West and the occasional obscure quote from some movie star or singer, and you've got the components of a perfectly successful fashion blog.

They're short, quirky, filled with spouts about the latest Manhattan or L.A. party or the absolute perfection in finding a vintage designer gold belt for $50 after, oh, about 3 hours of shopping. Don't forget the pictures. For some reason every fashion blogger feels the need to take multiple photos of themselves in random funky outfits and post them every single day. They're always in a hallway, in front of a door or out in the backyard, partially out of focus, with either a lawn gnome or some 60's-era wood carving picture in the background.

The whole thing feels like there's a constant mirror being shown in front of our faces - we need to show the absolute best of ourselves in front of it, lest we look like we're imperfect. It's a reality I'm trying to avoid, but still it lingers, showing my ugly reflection back at me. Maybe I should crack a smile. Or at least take a flash-filled picture of myself in the bathroom.

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