The website for Style By, a magazine based around a fashion blogger.
A new fashion title is being launched next week in Sweden. Nothing strange or startling about that — perhaps apart from the fact that the release party is taking place at the royal palace.
What is a bit surprising though is that this is the first fashion magazine that I am aware of which works as a vehicle for a fashion blogger. Imagine Oprah Winfrey’s O Magazine, but with Bryanboy instead of Ms Winfrey.
Elin Kling might be the most successful of Sweden’s mass of fashion blogging girls and now she has a magazine to prove it (here I must interject that I have written an article for the first issue but that’s all). Named Style by after her blog Style by Kling, it is one more example of the increasing clout of the fashion blogs.
In Sweden fashion blogs have been as reviled as elsewhere, but for some or other reason (which I’m sure I will come back to at some point) fashion blogs struck a chord with young Swedish fashion lovers, even at some points claiming that they were more trustworthy than mainstream fashion titles such as Elle or Damernas Värld.
But I don’t think it is a Swedish phenomenon. The rest of the world is slowly catching on, with bloggers such as Bryanboy or Style Bubble earning good money through their blogs, and it’s probably only a question of time before someone realises that “Hey, maybe we should start a magazine around these people who already have a following and lots of fans?”
I do think it’s one or two years away though. Internationally fashion blogs are still seen as light-weight and amateurish, often by people who have never taken the time to read the best ones. In fact, some of them are quite amazing, building professional-looking web sites, making collages and researching for hours. If the established fashion media don’t look out, they will soon be left behind.
