Blog your way to fashion glory

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If you thought the ramp was the only spot in fashion that could be accused of cradle snatching, with all the models turning pre-teens to pubescent, then it’s time to look lower. And by that we mean the front row, which is usually reserved for editors and self-professed fashionistas, is now school-ward bound.
Tavi Gevinson, a 14-year- old bespectacled teen, who till now has appeared on the cover of the New York magazine, is an inspiration for the fashion brand Rodarte’s (the award-winning fashion label run by sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy) a new line for Target and has her own line of T-shirts besides having turned a stylist recently. She is a front-row regular on all prominent New York fashion shows. All thanks to a blog, thestylerookie, which she started in 2008, when she was, hold your breath, 11.
She apparently makes sense and all this importance flying around is more than well-deserved. Armed with a research heavy hand and a Canon Powershot and self-timer, she chronicles the development of fashion around the world, along with self-styled portraits. Appreciated for her eye for detail, this young girl has a nose for news and opinions on everything from what’s wrong with the Seventeen magazine to how Courtney Love changed her life. Upcoming fashion designer Shweta Gupta, who follows her blog, says that her age is the most remarkable factor.
“The fact that she is so young and so individually styled is fascinating. Sometimes, I almost feel that it is an older woman masquerading as a teenager,” she jokes.
However, if you can seek solace in the fact that only savvy New York teens are capable of such feats then here is our Indian counterpart. Arushi Khosla, a 16-year-old schoolgirl from Delhi, who has been running her own fashion based blog fabblab for more than a year now and has about 500 daily hits to her credit. Sampling pieces from labels around the world, she relies on online shopping sites like net-a-porter and asos.com to feed her ravenous appetite for fashion, but also gives thrift stores the credit where it is due.
“There is no place like Sarojini Nagar and the clothes that you find there are one-of-a-kind,” says the teen, who is already on the panel of six different fashion portals including the style blogger for FCUK India.
While the home-page of her blog reads like the style section of any leading glossy, she confesses that most of her spending goes into accessorising. “I am a shoe person and do spend on them when they are worth it, but also they are easier to shop for online as you know that a size would fit you, as opposed to clothes,” she says. A blog that started as a desire to interact with like-minded people and make contacts as her friends would “often get bored of her rant” has taken her places.