Today’s topic is one that is near and dear to my heart because it is how I have been able to build in this industry. How to start a blog? Specifically a fashion blog. It’s something that I get asked all the time, especially from young people who want to break into the fashion industry or who want to become journalists or who want to figure out a way to break into journalism and they haven’t had a chance to intern at all these other places.
So for those of you who do not know, I started TheBlondeMisfit in 2015 as a result of me wanting to get into the fashion industry, but me not having any writing clips from any notable fashion publications. I did not intern in New York at all during college — I did not have any byline at any of them really well-known women’s lifestyle sites. And so I was at a disadvantage because no editor could vouch for me, and I didn’t have any real connections. So what I chose to do instead was start my own site and create my own content, so that at least I could show somebody that I could formulate a sentence. I could research and I could make things sound good. But that would eventually turn into what would become known as TheBlondeMisfit.
TheBlondeMisfit has obviously grown and evolved and changed in five years, the landscape of fashion has changed in five years, and it’s going to change again another five years, but there are some crucial things that I think still apply:
So first thing, what is your Why?
I ask people this all the time what is your why for doing anything in life? Fashion looks really nice on Instagram, on Twitter during Fashion Week, everyone loves to just say they’re part of fashion and that they are part of this industry that is very glamorized and sexy. But it’s also a lot of hard work. A lot of people gloss over the fact that there are sleepless nights, countless hours, a lot of moments that you just never get pat on the back. Your why has to be the thing that drives you. It has to be the thing that keeps you up at night. When I started TheBlondeMisfit and made it a fashion blog, I knew that I was serving a community of people who just always felt like they were never seen in fashion. I always felt like I never could find the black girl who was awkward, who had locks, who was plus-size, in the spaces.
And I was like, What? A girl like me belongs in fashion too. And a girl like me is the girls from the hood. You know the girls who wear rings on every single finger and wear bracelets up and down my wrists.
You need to figure out two to three main categories or topics that you want to focus on.
Fashion is very broad but there are subcategories in fashion. Do you want to focus on luxury? Do you want to just focus on the mass-market? Do you want to focus on accessibility? There are so many avenues that you can take with fashion and your fashion site, that you need to sit down and figure out exactly where you want to go. What you want to do. TheBlondeMisfit has gone through so many cycles, because one minute I wanted to be trending news, and then I realized I’m not The Shade Room of fashion.
Then I wanted to be someone who just did show reviews. And then I said I’m not the Vogue Runway of black girls. I realized that TheBlondeMisfit was a blend of all of these different worlds, but more importantly, it was more about the inclusion of saying, “we can be in all of these spaces and that THAT is fine, too.” It’s really important for you to figure out not just your why, but also the categories that you want to focus on. Because once you start figuring out your categories, you need to start projecting and creating content consistently.
Ask your audience what they would want to see. What do people come to you for? What do people search you out for? What do people look to you as the expert in or think of you first for if a particular problem comes up? I’m in grad school now, figuring out this whole fashion thing from a business perspective. But before then, my only training came from me going to the library and reading, watching documentaries, and studying, researching, researching, researching, and then work experience.
The kind of content that you make needs to be consistent.
This is something that I think is the hardest thing for people to do. A lot of times, people are working harder and not smarter. And one of the things I had to learn was that consistency, and being good to people were two of the strongest factors that you could do. When you are consistent, people trust you. Because what happens is in this microwavable Instagram bubble society, everybody’s expecting to blow up overnight. Everybody wants to be an overnight success. Everybody wants to just be pop in and hit 1000 likes on the gram. And they don’t want to put any work in.
So if you start a fashion site, a beauty site, a lifestyle site, whatever it is that you start, go on and just continue to put out consistent content. Whatever consistency looks like for you, maybe that’s starting off once a week, and then moving up to twice a week, maybe that’s starting at three times and then getting out, you know, on, on social, maybe that’s also getting on social media and then getting also onto IGTV. Whatever it is for you, like, just be consistent.
A lot of people don’t have the stamina to just consistently post and consistently produce with no results and no immediate results. You have to do what you have to do because, at the end of the day when the actual audience does come, you already got to be ready.
Hope you guys enjoyed this content!
