Founder: New York Magazine
From reporting on sales around New York to recapping
America's Next Top Model, New York magazine's
The Cut covers the fashion industry inside and out. The site's mix of news and biting commentary—one recent headline: "Alice +Olivia Collaborate With M.A.C; Women Who Don't Shave Spark Debate"—has made it a destination site for the fashion set.
This list is based on the rankings from
Signature 9's Style 99. The list is calculated by scoring bloggers on "general content quality, popularity, and buzz."
Founder: Popsugar
Part of the massive Sugar Inc. empire,
FabSugar is the fashion and accessories branch of PopSugar. "Fab" is a guide for trends and how to wear them, where to find the latest fashion goodies, and how to look like a rock star without spending like one.
Founder: The New York Times
The blog of The New York Times' T Magazine,
The Moment provides a wide-ranging survey of fashion and design. Topics range anywhere from mini-profiles of designers to style trends (clogs!)—all bolstered by vibrant New York Times photography.
Founder: Kathryn Finney
A combination of Midwestern charm and cranky advice turned Kathryn Finney's small project into No. 17 on the list.
The Budget Fashionista, as the name suggests, is all about saving while shopping and, not only has fashion advice, but an entire section for coupons and deals.
Founders: Rob Czar, Corinne Leigh, Meg Allan Cole
Threadbanger is all about D.I.Y. fashion—and features webisodes on how-tos and tutorials for fashion techniques. "Today's hippest trends aren't in New York, Paris, or Milan," the site proclaims. "They're waiting for you in your closet, your attic, and the thrift shop down the street."
Founder: Rumi Neely
Rumi Neely began selling vintage clothes on eBay in 2007. Her "Treasure Chest Vintage" store on the auction site became so popular that she started the blog
Fashion Toast after users wouldn't stop asking where she got her clothes. Two years later, she sat front row at the Paris shows, designed for RVCA, signed a modeling contract, and even earned a CNNMoney profile. Neely frequently collaborates with fellow blogger Kristin Valerie of
Beach Black, and the two cross-promote each other's products and shoots.
Founder: Alix Bancourt
Inspired by the Air song of the same name, Alix Bancourt created
The Cherry Blossom Girl as she was finishing fashion school and began designing her own line. The mood at Bancourt's site is decidedly feminine, with pastels, romantic scenery, and intricate embroidery underscoring most of her entries. She has been featured in countless magazines and on a variety of websites including The Guardian and The New York Times. Bancourt writes in French, but an English translation can be found directly below her original posts. The blogger, who describes herself as a "freelance stylist," takes all of her own photos despite not having studied photography at any point.
Founder: Nick Knight
Nick Knight's
ShowStudio is at the forefront of the fashion industry. The site livestreams fashion shows from around the world—most famously, Alexander McQueen's extra-terrestrial Spring/Summer 2010 collection, titled "Plato's Atlantis." Back in 2003, ShowStudio picked up an award for Best Fashion Website, and received the Design of the Year Award for Fashion in 2010. Robin Givhan, fashion editor for The Washington Post,
wrote about the effect live-streamed shows may have on the future of fashion: "Fashion's technology geeks are no longer reduced to clicking through still images or watching a few jittery seconds of bootleg runway footage on YouTube. They are in the audience—at least virtually—serving as critic and editor themselves."
Founder: Tavi Gevinson
Tavi Gevinson, of Oak Park, Illinois, began blogging when she was 11 years old. She turned 14 on Wednesday—but has already become the grand dame of fashion bloggers with
The Style Rookie. And she's already been the subject of fashion world
scandale: Seated behind Tavi at the Christian Dior show in Paris last February, an editor for Grazia Magazine
lamented on Twitter: "Dior through Tavi's pesky hat," with a picture of the back of Tavi's head. The comment set off a firestorm of blogs and tweets, and became a symbol for the tension between bloggers and magazine editors. "It sums up the Haters thing altogether," Tavi wrote on her blog. "… If I wore leather and studs no one would complain, and I'm not sorry for bringing a bit of color into the room. Haters gonna hate…" Since 2008, Tavi's been flooded with book and TV offers, which she's reportedly all turned down. In addition to running her blog, Gevinson has written for Harper's Bazaar and done a video for Target. But for now, she just has to get through middle school. She
wrote recently on her blog for Pop Magazine: "I composed this outfit in my head during school today. Life has been torturous ever since."
Founder: Mark Hunter
Mark Hunter began as an assistant for the artist Shepard Fairey—and has built an empire around hipster party pictures. The original incarnation of his photoblog
The Cobra Snake was called Polaroid Scene, a moniker that was short-lived because of threats of legal action from Polaroid. Since the site's inception, Hunter has gained friends in high places; he regularly photographs the likes of Karl Lagerfeld, shoots every major fashion week, tours internationally with DJ and Dim Mak Records head honcho Steve Aoki, and manages The Cobra Shop, his new online vintage store. And despite the fact that even Hunter himself
admits that "Most of my favorite pictures are of skinny girls sitting on the floor," The Cobra Snake has become the blog of record for hipster subculture.
Founder: Breaking Media
Fashionista has the feel of a magazine, with a big masthead and a series of glossy banner ads. Published by Breaking Media, Fashionista sets out to "chronicle the fashion trail from the runway to the first Canal Street knockoffs, while dishing the latest in supermodel gossip and finding the hottest new designers." But there's also room for provocative thought about the fashion industry, as editor Lauren Sherman
published an article about the effect of unpaid internships on the fashion industry.
Founder: Susanna Lau
British blogger Susanna "Susie Bubble" Lau began her blog in 2006—but now considers herself the "grandmother" of all fashion bloggers. She's only 26, but Lau has been around the block: Chanel flew her to Paris in 2007; Gucci invited her to a UNICEF benefit in 2008. But Lau has always focused on supporting emerging designers—and styles herself in her London home with clothes from many unheard-of European designers. Because of
Style Bubble, Lau was hired to write for Dazed magazine—but resigned a month ago to, she hopes, continue focusing on the blog and pursue freelance writing projects in the future. "If you're blogging for the sake of blogging, then you don't really try to earn anything," Lau says of the industry. "People aren't obligated to read your blog. But if you're trying to be something else—and want to become a fashion editor or a stylist or a social media consultant—that requires some depth."
Founder: Matt Halfhill
Many blogs that start out dedicated to streetwear and only the freshest of athletic inspired footwear end up becoming glossy, feature-laden compilations of anything that seems remotely trendy. Not so with Matt Halfhill's blog
Nice Kicks, which is dedicated solely to the art of the shoe. Nice Kicks—like SLAMXHYPE—is a part of Marc Ecko's network of Complex companies. The site features upcoming release dates for new shoe lines, a "Today's Kicks" section where Twitter users contribute pictures of their shoes of choice, as well as features on particularly note-worthy sneakers. Nice Kicks recently expanded into retail, with an Austin, Texas, store that opened in February.
Founder: Adam Bryce
SLAMXHYPE, also part of Marc Ecko's Complex Network, tracks hipness on a global scale. Unlike Nice Kicks, however, SLAMXHYPE has mushroomed into a team of bloggers that covers all things cutting-edge: reporting on marketing campaigns and art exhibitions accompany the typical shoe and clothing entries, and the site even publishes a quarterly fashion magazine entitled The New Order. The site has debuted an online store, carrying everything from clothing to books—so long as both are as fresh as possible.
Founders: Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
With a tagline "Fugly is the New Pretty," it isn't hard to win fans—and alienate celebrities.
Go Fug Yourself, owned by Celebuzz and run by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, unabashedly assigns stars "fugly" names when they wear something utterly regrettable. Olivia Palermo becomes "Fuglivia Palerfug," Emma Watson earned the title "Harry Potter and the Deathly Fuglows," for a lacey Christopher Kane dress that "looked like "Her boobs are wearing sunglasses!" The pair regularly liveblog awards ceremonies for Nymag.com, and have published a book,
Go Fug Yourself: The Fug Awards. "We're the Darth Vaders of celebrity fashion, constantly Striking Back, but without all the raspy breathing," Cocks has
said.
Founder: Garance Doré
Garance Doré has run her blog, Une Fille Comme Moi ("A Girl Like Me") since 2006—and reportedly gets around 50,000 page views a day. The blog focuses on anything from details of impeccable outfits (which Doré snaps herself) to drawings, writing, and travel pictures. Doré most recently collaborated with Elle, in which she photographed the "Style For Less" shoot in the May issue—and illustrated the magazine's Demi Moore cover for 100 limited edition copies. And, because like attracts like, Doré is dating her male counterpart,
The Sartorialist's Scott Schuman.
Founder: Yvan Rodic
London-based photographer Yvan Rodic started his blog,
The Face Hunter, in January 2006. He captures fashionable people on the streets, at parties, and at fashion shows around the world—and has created quite a following over the last four years. Now, Rodic has a lot to keep him busy: He pens a weekly column for The Guardian, the Parisian boutique Colette has exhibited a collection of his photographs, he is working on a television project, and has released
FaceHunter, a hardcover book of his style photographs.
Founder: David Fischer
High Snobiety rounds out the top three most influential fashion sites—all of which were started in 2005. David Fischer's site also hosts features and a host of bloggers (the latter are amassed under the banner of "The Columns"), but it has something other sites don't: the Storeguide. The collection of about 200 stores—from Mishka to Fred Segal to Uniqlo and hailing from Singapore to the States to Spain—provides a map of each store's location, hours, and a look inside each boutique. It's not Citysearch, but it is a good place to start. Fischer's network has since expanded to
HighSnobette—which has similar offers for his female audience.
Founder: Kevin Ma
Kevin Ma started
Hypebeast in January 2005 after growing frustrated "having to browse multiple sites to keep up with the latest information." The daily fashion news site was originally a sneaker blog, but has since grown to a full-scale operation featuring 40 bloggers read in a total of 16 million page views per month (according to the site's own figures). Hypebeast now has its own forums (where discussion topics range from Nike—almost 40,000 posts—to the catchall "Off Topic" category with over 600,000 posts). Ma remains the site's editor in chief, where he reigns over content that now includes hip music videos, a Sartorialist-like "Streetsnaps" vertical, and features on designers and collections.
Founder: Scott Schuman
The Sartorialist was born from the idea that Scott Schuman wanted to share photos of regular people on the street he thought looked great. After working in sales and marketing for the likes of Valentino, Schuman merged his love for fashion and photography into this blog. "I thought I could shoot people on the street the way designers look at people, and get and give inspiration to lots of people in the process," he writes on his site. Often, the entire blog entry will be a singular photograph depicting an especially stylish person, but Schuman has extended his reach into architecture and commentary as well. Schuman is certainly the most well-known of the on-the-street fashion bloggers; he pens a column for GQ, published a hardcover book,
The Sartorialist in 2009, and has been named one of Time magazine's "Top 100 Design Influencers."
