The Internet has changed the hierarchy of the fashion industry. It may not have rendered it egalitarian in the truest sense — clicking through the latest Marc Jacobs show on style.com doesn’t quite compare to being front-row center, and thumbing through a glossy magazine isn’t exactly the same as producing it from behind the scenes — but that hasn’t stopped the women in the growing fashion blogger community from taking some editorial control into their own hands. Their playground is their blogging engine; their tools are their cameras and whatever’s hanging in their closets; and they fill every role themselves, from model and stylist to photographer and writer. Here in Massachusetts, we found four up-and-coming bloggers who live and breathe fashion with a passion that rivals that of any expert. Whether they’re posting from Cambridge or Jamaica Plain, on the subject of studded boots or their favorite boutiques, there’s something uniquely New England about each of their sites.
Kristina Wong, dreamecho (hello-dreamecho.blogspot.com)
Few
young women who came of age in the 1990s made it through to the other
side of teenagedom without seriously pining after the wardrobe of one
Claudia Kishi — the most stylish member of Ann M. Martin’s The Baby-Sitter’s Club
series. To covet Claudia’s multicolored leggings, wild earrings, and
mind-boggling collection of minidresses was practically a rite of
passage. Kristina Wong remembers how that felt. “I loved reading about
how she would construct these offthewall, colorful outfits,” says Wong.
“In every book, there’d be a description of how one piece of clothing
or an accessory would lead to another, or there’d be some iconic
character from a movie whom she’d try to emulate.” Wong is enthralled
by the “bewitching, knowing insouciance” of French New Wave actress
Anna Karina, the “unconventionally glamorous” Chloë Sevigny, and the
frumpy summer ease of Dirty Dancing. Yet it’s her childhood literary
heroines — characters like Claudia and Harriet the Spy — who inspire
her the most.
Wong, 25, comes from fashionable stock. Her mother
studied and worked in the industry in New York; her influence is what
led Wong to become as passionate about fashion as she is about her
engineering career. Dreamecho is an organic outgrowth of that
juxtaposition. Science collides with art and prose daily in this
fashion and style blog, which Wonguses to showcase her ideas,
obsessions, and everyday experiences. Put simply, it’s a close study of
one girl’s fashion ideals. “The things that I value in life are the
very things that guide the blog: selfconfidence, independent and
critical thinking, imagination and creativity, earning one’s own way,
living up to one’s fullest potential and living joyously,” Wong says.
“That’s how I try to live and, hence, that’s how I approach fashion.”
For more than a year, dreamecho has been a place where Wong can tap
into and articulate her creative castles in the sky, then make those
personal discoveries public.
One reader favorite, “dreamecho
plays dressup,” has Wong parading her favorite new purchases in a
variety of combinations where she “shapeshifts” a single item of
clothing — an Urban Outfitter cardigan, say, or a Forever 21 skirt —
into five different, wholly imaginative looks. Wong often writes about
local stores in both Boston and her home city of Honolulu, with
soliloquies on purchases she yearns to make. She also runs interviews
with designers like Michelle Lau and pens essays on how one’s sense of
style can mesh with one’s life philosophy. Recently, Wong published
“Nocturne,” a self-produced and styled photo shoot of her posing in a
variety of looks; light-saturated, unexpected, and equal parts
whimsical and edgy, it speaks to Wong’s taste in both style blogs and
consumer magazines. “I’m interested in editorials that awaken the
imagination through scenery, lighting, modeling,” she says. “I’m
looking for a coherent story. Something that takes me to another place.”
Dreamecho
already has an international audience clicking through daily, but as
Wong pursues goals in fashion styling and freelance writing, she’s
simultaneously on a mission to inspire dressers on her home turf. “I’d
love to see more people [in Boston] experimenting, not so much to be
different for the sake of being different, but to see what really works
for them,” she says. “I just want to see and connect with people in
tune with themselves and therefore what they wear, whether it be
gothic, athletic, preppy, functional, avantgarde, vintage, or some
crazy mixture! If anything, I try to be an example of someone who
follows her own heart.”
Francesca Zmetra, The Snail and the Cyclops (thesnailandthecyclops.blogspot.com)
Regular
readers of Francesca Zmetra’s blog know she harbors a hardcore vintage
addiction. One day she’s a flapper in fringe, her short pixie hairdo
perfectly askew; the next, she’s channeling the luxe chic of a ’60s
socialite or posing at the Fairmont Copley Plaza dressed like a
mid-century schoolgirl. “There’s something to love about each era of
the 19th century,” says Zmetra, 22, who goes by the nickname Effie.
“Although I do think my cutoff point is 1969. Things get a bit wacky
for me after that.”
Growing up surrounded by lace, antiques, and
pink china dovetailed into Zmetra’s devotion to an “old, dainty
aesthetic,” now also a reoccurring theme on the Snail and the Cyclops.
Zmetra first began documenting her personal style online at the Flickr
community Wardrobe Remix. She found herself writing little stories to
accompany her photos and warmed to the fashion blog community
immediately. “Instead of turning to the magazines first, girls are
looking to their Internet pages,” she says. “For me, it’s more
inspirational to look at real girls who can create a beautiful look
entirely on their own — and on a budget! — and see that it’s totally
possible to do something equally lovely [as] what a team of
professionals can do.” On the Snail and the Cyclops, which she launched
this past summer, Zmetra shares old family pictures and chronicles her
Vermont thrifting adventures, her trips to LA and New York City, and
weekends spent walking around Boston in T-strap flats and full-skirted
dresses from Café Society and Bobby’s from Boston. “I like to remind
people to surround themselves with some special little things here and
there,” says Zmetra of her blog’s purpose. “I think the best thing
about New England is its old, old history. There’s this strange feeling
of something more to be discovered. I think the best places to go are
the back roads for flea markets and barn sales. You just never know
what you’re going to stumble upon.” Treasure-hunting and trolling for
secrets — whether solely for her own pleasure or as preparation for
owning her own little shop someday — is part of the
old-timey-meets-modern charm behind Zmetra’s site.
The Jamaica
Plain resident, who’s hoping to study fashion merchandising at Mt. Ida
next spring, frequently posts about the preloved clothing she sells in
her Etsy and eBay shops under her label Thirteen Eighty Five. But most
entries hearken back to Zmetra’s childhood penchant for spending days
exploring her grandmother’s attic. “I used to play dressup in ’40s
crepe dresses and pretend to play the piano wearing all her costume
jewelry,” Zmetra remembers. “She never throws anything away, so her
house is a time capsule! I blame everything on her and those hot summer
days waltzing around the house, listening to polka, and trying hard not
to step on the hems of her dresses.”
Martine Séverin, Beyond Boston Chic (beyondbostonchic.blogspot.com)
Martine
“Martini” Séverin describes her personal style as “everevolving and
quirky, with a nod to the classics,” but it wasn’t until she spent a
year in France that she first became seriously invested in fashion. “My
French friends told me that I should always dress as if I were about to
meet the man of my dreams,” she says. After she returned to Boston —
Séverin was born in Haiti, raised in Cambridge, and now lives in
Dorchester — she realized that only the French took this particular
approach. “My friends in Boston helped me modify this axiom,” says
Séverin. “Always dress as if you’re about to run into your ex.”
Her
sartorial mantra in place, Séverin set out to find new outfit ideas to
incorporate into her own closet. “Boston is a challenging place to be
fashionable — the winters are brutal and the streets are cobblestone.
It’s a bit more difficult to look cute and fashionable when there are
four feet of snow on the ground,” she says, adding that the local
student population’s affinity for pajama daywear combined with five
months of winter is part of what has given New England fashion a bad
rap. “My chic fellow Bostonians and I will have a lot to learn from
each other this winter.” Beyond Boston Chic, Séverin’s sixmonthold
Style blog, is the current vehicle for her selfeducation and a
clearinghouse for what she considers the best of Boston fashion.
Fashion photography blog The Sartorialist
is Séverin’s blog equivalent of a muse. It’s run by Scott Schuman, an
amateur photographer who turned professional as a result of his site’s
popularity among industry insiders and admiring lay fashionistas.
Schuman photographs quirky-cute girls on bikes in Europe,
unconventional hipsters and dapper senior citizens in Manhattan,
fashion editors exiting various Fashion Week shows, effortless in their
sky-high heels and sunglasses. “I’m definitely a groupie,” says Séverin
of Schuman. “His blog always reminds me how important it is to take all
aspects of an outfit into consideration. He helps to train my eye.”
Beyond Boston Chic follows a similar, clean format of color snaps on a
white background, allowing the images to speak for themselves.
And
like Schuman, Séverin doesn’t limit herself to the classic side of
chic. While she currently favors the ultrafemme tailoring of the late
’40s through the early ’60s as portrayed on AMC’s Mad Men, she
isn’t afraid to shoot Bostonians working a different kind of
silhouette. In July, she snapped a punk-rock girl in Harvard Square’s
“Pit,” a tattooed dude hanging around McKenna’s in Dorchester, and a
Second Time Around shop girl in a teal floorlength dress with rosette
details. The 30-year-old-project manager and Harvard grad student
loves the fact that style blogs have made fashion more transparent and
accessible, and relies on the Internet and magazines to tell her
“what’s hot and what’s not.” Still, in the end, Séverin says, “clothes
are just clothes. They don’t define you. Wear what you want.”
Amy Lynn Chase, Punky Style (punkystyle.com)
When
Amy Lynn Chase was in third grade, she hated wearing dresses. The last
thing she wanted to do was rock a frock on class picture day. “I hid an
alternative outfit in my backpack to change into at school. Boy, were
the parents shocked when I brought those pictures home,” says Chase.
“The outfit I chose was a neon parrot shirt, black leather mini skirt
with neon parrotprint leggings, and LA Gear high tops. They let me
dress myself after that.”
A credit manager by day and a
bartender by night, Chase spends her free time selling vintage pieces
online — when she isn’t blogging. She started Punky Style in 2005, back
when personal fashion blogs were, as she calls them, “a rare and
precious thing to come by”; she wanted to be a part of something that
she felt was the future of the fashion industry. Chase points out that,
much as trends on the runway are repeated in major fashion magazines,
grassroots fashionblogger trends often reach similar exposure. “But I
think it’s easier to relate when the trends are on everyday people,”
she notes. “Bloggers are on the forefront of trends. They are way ahead
of the magazines.”
Her own aesthetic changes with her mood —
“today [it’s] expressive, unpolished, funky, carefree, and kinda
quirky” — and Punky Style mirrors her free-ranging predilections. She’s
posted about everything from DIY-ing a pair of spats (originally meant
to be a recreation of cuffed sandals) to polished images of herself
modeling pretty cotton skirts cinched high up on the waist. Chase also
recently organized an ecooriented clothing swap for her readers, “Swap
’til You Drop,” at the Lucky Dog Music Hall in Worcester; she plans to
hold another in the next few months. While she finds herself lusting
after expensive outfits worn by such actresssocialites as Rachel
Bilson, Lou Doillon, and Olivia Palermo, Chase still prefers to shop at
thrift stores and cites her grandmother as her main style paradigm.
“She always manages to accessorize beautifully even in her old age,”
Chase says. “She taught me everything I know about being classy.”
The
27-year-old has always thought of Punky Style as more than just a
fashion blog — it’s also something akin to a photo diary. A trip
through her archives, she says, reminds her of former shopping
excursions, weekends with friends, and past loves. “I would continue to
blog even if no one were reading,” Chase says. “But if there was one
thing I would want people to take from my blog, it’s that fashion is
not a label or a price tag, and it’s way more fun when it’s not taken
too seriously.”
