Blogs have come a long way since the days of posting your favourite quotes or lyrics, your holidays, or teenage rants about an unsatisfactory youth. Some of today’s blogs can be big business, with people using them as a platform to write professionally about any of a myriad of subjects they are passionate about.
People become renowned for their blogs in this way. Lady Melbourne is a prime example of an ‘everyday’ individual going her own way in creating a professional blog coveted by many. Five years ago, Phoebe Montague began posting ‘daily photographs of herself on the internet’ dressed in various fashions. This soon escalated to a full-blown fashion blog. Phoebe is a prime example of a woman who honed her craft and is now one of the biggest names in the Fashion Blogging industry.
It’s bloggers like Phoebe who have caused, blog enthusiast Diya Pat to decide to pay homage to those who blog about two major cultural topics in Melbourne: art and fashion. On Friday night, Diya hosted “Trapped in a Zoo: Melbourne’s Art and Fashion Bloggers Evening” in the underground area of The Atlantic at Crown, known as The Den. The aptly named ‘Den’ held all manner of ‘creatures’ encompassed by the ‘Trapped in a Zoo’ theme. On the evening, the bloggers, their friends and fans were dressed to the nines in their animal themed get-up.
The night also had an element of charity attached to it, with profits from a silent auction going towards Seven Women, a not for profit organisation which helps disabled women earn money through the products they make and sell in Australia.
There were many extraordinary people present on the night, writers from all kinds of blogs, representing all aspects of fashion and art blogging, including Miranda’s Inside Scoop (a somewhat poetic look at all things fashion), Invurt (a discussion of street art), and Meet Me On The Streets (an ode to street style).
It was the delightfully punny fashion blog, Fashion Camille Leon that won out in the end. The witty and gracious Camille told of her, ‘simple love of fashion and writing -especially alliteration and puns,’ and how she ‘never expected to win tonight’ as she claimed the prize of a lovely merino-wool scarf from Etal.
The night was a plaudit for an emerging form of journalism and it will be interesting to watch if Fashion Camille Leon goes the same way as Lady Melbourne in the future.
Madeleine McCarty is in her final-year of a Bachelor of Arts with a Major in Media Studies at La Trobe University. She is a former upstart editor and now feels like going for a run. You can follow her on Twitter @MadeleineKMcC.
