How Blogging Changed My Life... by Annie of 'The Quarterlife Tales of Annie Bean..'

As I sat compiling my list of Christmas gifts to buy I felt suddenly stunned at how quick the year had vanished.  It seemed like only five minutes ago I was welcoming in the New Year, and here I was planning this year’s celebrations along with writing my present shopping list.  As I pondered how fast the seasons had changed with the end of the year getting closer, one thing that had transformed for the better was me and my life.

I’m a very average twenty-something year old with a background in music, arts and events.  I had studied at university to masters level in music industry management, but due to the recession I’d struggled to get a job in that particular field, I was either under experienced or too experienced and nothing seemed to work.  As I approached my late twenties I finally decided enough was enough and took the plunge by following another career path, my days went by happily in my job in events management but I knew I wasn’t completely content... there was something missing.   It was a bit of an unknown void in my life so I started taking part in various activities to help but that feeling just wouldn't budge.  One day my boyfriend suggested I started a blog, his sister was a writer of a very popular Mummy blog and even though that’s not the sort of blog I’d create I decided to give it whirl.  I wasn't a writer and had never studied journalism, therefore was slightly hesitant about how I'd be perceived to the reader.

I pondered for hours trying to figure out what to write about, so I started with what I knew best which was music. I’m quite opinionated and used that skill to my advantage by writing about topics that meant something to me.  I began writing reviews about live gigs and single releases - that’s when I suddenly started to feel that passion within me emerge.  I didn't want to limit myself to just music, as a result I slowly started to layer in my other personal life passions; fashion, beauty, fitness and lifestyle.  I didn't want to be pigeon holed as a specific type of blogger, I'm a diverse individual and wanted that to come across through my articles. I wanted to produce a blog that was not overly personal, but could hopefully give people something they could relate to, be a good read and maybe inspire them.

One of my key blogging topics of interest is fashion and my personal style; If you’d of met me years ago you'd be possibly wondering how the devil I was invited to London Fashion Week and the Elle Style Awards.  I used to be rather clueless when it came to clothes and how to dress, but It seemed the more I wrote about the subject the more self confidence I gained.  I'd always adored fashion and admired designers and styles but had no confidence to talk about it, somehow my blog gave me the platform to explore that admiration.

I don't really know how my quarter-life tales is interesting to those who visit my site, but I must be writing something that's intriguing because I'm getting more and more hits each month.  I love to write about my life adventures;  perhaps I've been camping in the Lake District, maybe I've had a tea party and tried a new cake recipe, or possibly I have taken part in local race or there's a new hair product I have fallen in love with.  I simply write what I want, how I want and when I want, that's the beauty of blogging there's no restrictions at all, I can indulge in all my loves and that's why it's changed my life for the better.  

I once was a girl confused about my life direction who couldn't land a job where she wanted, I now have the best of both worlds.  I have only been blogging for just over a year and I love every second of it, I just hope my random adventures continue to inspire those who read it. Who knows where this will lead, but all I know right now is that I'm a girl leading a far more confident and happy existence through a blog full of my quarter-life tales.

Annie Bean is the author of 'The Quarter Life Tales of Annie Bean' -
Annie Bean

Blog Writer

The Quarter-life Tales of Annie Bean

Dedicated Follower of Fashion

E: talesofanniebean@gmail.com

W: www.talesofanniebean.com

Mary Fellowes, fashion stylist, blogs on The Woes of the Fashion Bloggerazzi

If power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, the same is true of fame. Whitney Houston is its latest victim - there have been countless others before her, and countless more to come. Its victims’ demise isn’t always as dramatic as Whitney’s - death is final and dramatic whether suicidal or accidental in celebrities, but the slow erosion and corruption of a character is in some ways just as sad.

Fashion has often crossed over with fame in the Venn diagram of entertainment and celebrity – more so than any other design form due to its relationship with glamour and the human form. And there is nothing wrong with recognition and achievement - or becoming a household name. As with any fame, the key to it is when fame and recognition has been earned. That makes it easier to live with - the inevitable symptom or by-product after years of coming up through the ranks, jumping through hoops, performing the endless monotonous rites of passage that others have done before to get to the top. 

But what about when fame is not earned? What threats lurk within the psyche when fame has been bestowed instantly, in a heartbeat? There is no need to lament the victims of reality television during the last decade, as it is a given. But the rip-tide of instant fame is claiming new victims for itself: in the fashion world. The ‘bloggerazzi’ have turned fashion week into an ugly circus of attention seeking wannabes, feeding and fuelling egos of its subjects with flashbulbs for sustenance.

Out of nowhere in the last few years, an army of apparent nobodies has swelled in numbers, taking over the front line, making entering into a show like running the gauntlet. More often than not clad in outlandish and forced looking outfits, they have adopted the customs of the paparazzi but sadly they have none of the clout.  Because outside of the microcosm of fashion, no one is interested in what Japanese Vogue’s Anna Della Russo (the bloggers’ favourite) is wearing.

Thanks to the bloggerazzi, a tragic parade now takes place in all the fashion weeks. Since the dawn of the international fashion collections, all of us in the industry have always seized the opportunity of fashion week to have a bit more fun with our outfits, but the presence of this battalion, emerging from their trenches with semi-professional cameras poised like shields, has generated a giant extra swathe of pretentious, attention seeking dressing up and poseur behaviour. Their incessant snapping away feeds straight into the ego and insecurity in each one of their subjects, giving them the illusion that somehow they are - well - famous.

Where is all of this imagery going?  I wondered that when I got ‘papped’ for the first few seasons while the bloggerazzi was in its infancy. Did I play along with it? Sure I did, at first. But after a while, it becomes incredibly tedious. You go to fashion week, surprisingly enough, to work. The schedule is gruelling and the brain switches between overdrive and overload by the second, by the hour. And after wasting time posing for a group of self-important, self anointed pseudo opinion formers, you realise that so few of these images they shoot ever make it into a domain big enough to justify all the hype and chaos, that actually it is not really worth it after all.

It is not to decry fashion blogs per se. There are countless very successful fashion bloggers out there – Tommy Ton, Tavi, Bryan Boy, The Sartorialist, Susie Bubble, Liberty London Girl and so on. They are the democracy to fashion publishing’s autocracy. David takes on the publishing world’s Goliath and wins. But these pioneers are unwittingly thorough, they attend the shows and have a unique point of view that is worth hearing – and which is why Dolce and Gabbana made media history by putting them all front row several seasons back at their D&G show in Milan, next to super-snapper Mario Testino. And which is why some of them can earn hundreds of thousands of pounds a year in advertising and brand collaborations.

But it is the legions of street-style snappers, the bloggerazzi that ruin it for everyone else, that turn it into a cliché and a soap opera. Millions and millions of pictures of street style, filling up the world wide web’s vortex with junk and simultaneously creating the myth of fame for people who are otherwise regular people with full time jobs in the fashion industry. They are not performers or actors with immense talent that can reach out and affect the hearts and mind of the great public, they are actually store buyers, writers, editors and stylists. But all these people’s overnight status can escalate within the bubble of the fashion industry, giving them an illusion of disproportionate self-importance. The danger is that people could start believing their own hype and succeed above other more talented, less attention-seeking colleagues, purely because they gained a little fame in the fashion bubble – style over content, the book’s cover mattering more than its story inside. It feels as if Warhol is laughing all the way to the bank.


Mary Fellowes is a London-based fashion stylist. A former assistant to Isabella Blow at British Vogue, Fellowes currently works as a consultant to a number of fashion houses and her work is regularly featured in Vogue.

Why Bloggers Rule the Roost - our latest blog for The Huffington Post UK

In The Times' Saturday magazine last weekend, new fashion editor, Laura Craik squeezed into a designer dress, climbed into a pair of towering high heels and took centre stage in her own feature. These days, she said, fashion editors don't have much choice but to get in front of the camera and model the products themselves and this is thanks largely to fashion bloggers, who, "without a budget, created their own visual content" and made their blogs "all the more compelling for it."

Editors and traditional publishing outlets have been trying to harness the power of the blog for a while now - by forcing their writers to step into the limelight, by launching their own blogs and by inviting bloggers to write for them - but brands too are actively courting bloggers in their attempt to extend and add value to their publicity.

To read the full blog, visit The Huffington Post. And do feel free to share the article on your social media pages, or use the comments section to give your own views on the subject.