Scroll through any street style images of Fashion Week, and it'd be hard to miss a petite Asian girl in a colourful patterned jacket (or three). Her name is Susie Lau, creator of one of the original hit blogs, Style Bubble. We caught up with the London-based creative to talk about how blogging has changed since she started in 2006.
How do you feel the nature of blogging has changed since you first began?
Susie Lau (SL) The game has changed fundamentally. When I started, it was “bedroom blogging"--just people doing it as a geeky hobby, and it felt almost old fashioned. And then it became a business, about bloggers engaging with brands, particularly in fashion, and brands wanting to use bloggers as alternative forms of media.
Today, bloggers are not just bloggers—they’re influencers and KOLs and their platforms reach across all social platforms. We’ve never had more choice of forms of fashion inspiration and it’s become a lot more diversified.
What are some cons of this trend, in your opinion?
SL I get very wary of clickbait and I think you’re seeing a lot of pushback from other content creators as well as audiences who are actually very discerning. Creatives need to have conviction in the work they produce and have a healthy balance and self-edit when it comes to working with brands, because if it’s good and authentic content, you will get engagement whether it’s an ad or not.
My pet peeve are Instagram girls who kind of look the same and you can’t tell one from another in a line-up because they all wear the same brands. It comes down to the democracy of fashion now, as it’s so easy to look cool just by putting on Vetement or Balenciaga boots. Fashion has never been more available to us but I think there’s a slight shame in that too.