Wired for style in L.A.
When Joel Knoernschild, designer of cult men’s brand KZO, wanted to break the news of his collaboration with fellow L.A. label Unholy Matrimony, he skipped over big newspapers and apparel trade publications and went straight to his favorite blog, Trend Land .
“After it was posted on the site, all the other fashion blogs and websites picked it up,” said Knoernschild, adding that KZO’s inbox was soon flooded with requests for the new line.
The Santa Monica-based fashion and culture website -- which runs chatty reviews of designer and fashion collections-- is among scores of relatively new websites and blogs based in L.A. that are reshaping the tumultuous media landscape. As designers, advertisers and readers increasingly seek them out, these rising arbiters of style are rapidly gaining clout and cachet.
Independent brands and retailers have come to consider the Web an integral part of their marketing efforts, having seen established style websites like Daily Candy (dailycandy.com) and Fashionista (fashionista.com) help launch many a fledgling line.
“We were the first to write about Rebecca Minkoff’s [top-selling] Morning After bag,” said Daily Candy’s L.A. editor, Crystal Meers. “We get to see a brand turn into something a lot bigger -- and sometimes things literally start as, ‘Can you come over and see some samples in my garage?’ It’s exciting.”
Los Angeles-based designer Jenni Kayne, who shows in New York each season, says that though she doesn’t read many blogs, she makes sure reporters from the major ones, including L.A.’s WhoWhatWear (www.whowhat wear.com), are invited to her events. “Inviting the right bloggers is as important as inviting the bigger publications, and maybe even more important soon,” she noted. “Magazines are getting smaller and smaller.”
And the universe of the online fashion-obsessed seems only to be expanding. When Corinne Grassini, designer for L.A.-based Society for Rational Dress, was in Dallas earlier this year on a tour promoting a capsule collection she designed for Barneys New York, she made it a point to meet with Jane Aldridge, the precocious 16-year-old blogger behind the breathless online fashion chronicle Sea of Shoes ( www.seaofshoes.com). A blurb Aldridge posted early this year on the brand resulted in a rush of people signing the guest book on the label’s website.
“These blogs are to be appreciated, for sure,” Grassini said. “As an independent designer you don’t always have huge advertising dollars. Bloggers are a less ‘spendy’ way to get your name out there.”
Teen-focused mass brands and retailers have boasted souped-up websites for years, but the wise ones are also targeting blogs in their marketing efforts. One of the first campaigns for Quiksilver’s new women’s contemporary brand featured a gaggle of SoCal’s independent fashion bloggers as models on the company website.
“Blogs are the new wave of marketing,” said Catlin Rawling, marketing manager for Quiksilver’s women’s division. “We want to start forming those relationships and inviting them to events. These bloggers are reaching all these girls we’re trying to reach ourselves.”
The bloggers featured in the campaign are part of a groundswell of model-esque young SoCal fashion fanatics who post photos of their daily outfits online -- creating a kind of wardrobe diary. Among them, Taghrid Chaaban (see accompanying story); Rachel Nguyen (thatschic.net), a 19-year-old Orange Coast College student whose blog’s motto is, “All you need is love, but a glossy Vogue is a glorious substitute”; and Krystal Simpson (whatisrealityanyway.blogspot.com), a 26-year-old professional model and Chloe Sevigny twin whose photos look as if they were ripped out of Nylon magazine. Krystal Simpson
The sites are thin on commentary, but fat with fashion experimentation and unadulterated enthusiasm -- something fashion insiders can hardly ever muster.
Still, these are niche destinations for a narrow audience -- namely, other fashion-obsessed young women.
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When the focus shifts to harder fashion news, the number of voices drops. But those who have embraced the task of digging it up and disseminating it have found a ready audience.
Racked LA, which is owned by the Curbed Network in New York, has quickly become an authority on all things retail in L.A. since launching in April last year -- stalking empty lots and storefronts in hot pursuit of the next retail opening.
At Racked, getting the goods first has always been top priority. “The speed of how things get disseminated is what makes blogs stand out,” said Erin Manger, a freelance blogger for the site. “We’ll have a notice for a sale up within five minutes of hearing about it.”
Former Racked LA editor Tasha Nita Adams, who often scooped major fashion publications during her time there, now runs the site Blackburn and Sweetzer(blackburnand sweetzer.com), reporting on retail and fashion news in the high-traffic shopping neighborhood sprawls from 3rd Street to Melrose Avenue near the Beverly Center in L.A. “I think people are looking for something that speaks to them and is very specific,” Adams said.
Hillary Kerr and Katherine Power, the founders and editors of the celebrity fashion site Who What Wear, are two in a growing cadre of online-only journalists in L.A. with print pedigrees. They were editors at Elle magazine before noticing that “a lot of magazines were going online or were folding,” Kerr said.
Before starting their site, “we didn’t see anything that addresses celebrity fashion in a way that consumers can relate to,” she said.
With a subscriber list of 100,000-plus and 1.75 million unique visits a month, Who What Wear is a guilty-pleasure read, sans the Perez Hilton-style snark. Power and Kerr have a book due out in September, “Who What Wear: Celebrity and Runway Style for Real Life,” based on the site, and they are developing a fashion news show with MTV.
Merle Ginsburg, one of L.A.’s most well-known fashion journalists, was tapped last year by stylist Svengali Margaret Maldonado and her husband, Mikko Koskinen, to be the editor of their fashion blog, Fashion Rules (fashionrules.com).
Ginsburg’s experience and connections -- she was formerly on staff at W magazine and has written for publications that include Elle Decor and Rolling Stone -- make the site a rare insider’s read among L.A. blogs. Recent posts included a play-by-play of a private dinner party with designer Catherine Malandrino, a heads-up on a VIP sample sale and savvy collection reviews.
She sees her L.A. location -- 3,000 miles from the heart of the U.S fashion industry -- as advantageous. “There is a ton of fashion happening here,” she said. “In many ways, the way people dress in L.A. has become more interesting than New York because we have much more freedom and funkiness. Celebrities seem to start more trends than New York socials or models these days -- and even Europe seems more fixated on dressing L.A. girls than New York ones.”
Maldonado, Koskinen and Ginsburg hope to add writers in other cities to expand the site, which gets 65,000 unique visitors per month. A series of books that Ginsburg said “relate to dressing in various cities,” is in the works too. Instead of selling ads to make a profit, the site will eventually sell products.
Palos Verdes-based Kelly Cook is already turning a profit with the website Bag Snob ( www.bagsnob.com) and its offshoots, Couture Snob ( www.couturesnob.com), Tot Snob ( www.totsnob.com) and Beauty Snob ( www.beautysnob.com.)
Launched in 2005 by Cook and Tina Craig (who’s based in Dallas), Bag Snob now garners 100,000-plus unique visitors monthly, and nets more than six figures a year via its affiliate programs with e-commerce sites including Net-a-Porter, Saks Fifth Avenue and ELuxury.
It works like this: Cook and Craig blog about a bag, then link to one of their affiliates where shoppers can buy it. The bloggers get a cut of the profits on sales that come from these links to their site. (And their recommendations are like a priest’s blessing -- bags they laud routinely sell out on Net-a-Porter.)
“We wrote like we were talking to a girlfriend, and that really resonated with people,” Cook said. “We talk about overpriced bags or blatant label whoring. My mom always said shopping would be the end of me, that it would destroy me. She was wrong.”
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