Blogging isn’t just for fashion-savvy capitals like New York City and Los Angeles anymore.
Fashion and lifestyle blogs are popping up all over the country, including Baton Rouge. For many, blogging usually starts as a hobby but has potential to kickstart a career in the industry associated with the blog’s focus.
Such was the case for fashion and lifestyle blogger Jennifer Palpallatoc.
After working in local boutiques while studying at LSU, Palpallatoc said she felt inspired to begin a fashion blog to include in her portfolio for future job interviews. It quickly became an obsession, and she found it to be a fun hobby. But while she became more involved in her website, she felt less motivated to finish her studies, she said.
“My blog was giving me more opportunities than school was,” she said.
Palpallatoc left LSU to focus on her website.
She said companies began reaching out to her to feature products in her blog in exchange for payment, something commonly arranged in the blogging world. However, she noted that she would never feature a product that doesn’t align with her style.
RewardStyle, a company helping bloggers monetize their content, changed the game for Palpallatoc, she said.
RewardStyle’s app LIKEtoKNOW.it sends an email with outfit details and links to purchase the pieces to subscribers when they “like” one of Palpallatoc’s Instagrams. For each purchase through the app, Palpallatoc makes a commission.
Eventually, these ventures became so lucrative that Palpallatoc could leave her day job as a fashion editor at DIG BR magazine and pursue blogging full time, she said.
Her daily blogger routine begins with a cup of coffee, a bowl of oatmeal and her laptop ready to post Instagrams and blogs.
Her deadline for her daily post is at 11 a.m., when her pre-scheduled email newsletter sends to subscribers. While writing her post, she multitasks by promoting herself on social media and responding to emails. Throughout the day, she receives and organizes her daily packages from fashion and home brands that send her products to review and plans her next move on her website, she said.
Despite her struggle in Information Systems and Decisions Sciences courses at LSU, Palpallatoc is completely responsible for her web domain, and she said she codes for her website herself.
Her blog has provided her opportunities like traveling to New York, where she collaborated on a handbag design with Gigi New York. The bag became her namesake — the Jenn Bucket Bag.
This type of work is a career goal for Claire Plauche, a Textiles, Apparel, Merchandising sophomore who runs her own fashion blog, Creme de la Claire.
Currently, Plauche is on her way with her first big step in the blogger realm, something common for Palpallatoc — working with an accessories company.
Rocksbox jewelry subscription service recently teamed up with Plauche, providing her a discount code for her followers, she said. This is her first sponsorship from a brand.
“Whenever I got it, I teared up a little bit,” she said.
But what sets Plauche’s blog apart from many others is its attainability and affordability, she said.
She attributes a lot of her closet to stores like Target and Forever 21, since she’s on a college budget.
However, she concedes her adoration for high-end, fashion magazines. Pages from Elle, Vogue and other fashion publications are precisely puzzled together along the wall of her room, serving as inspiration for her ensembles.
Plauche said she covets fashion magazines, admitting to hoarding three years of Glamour magazines — none of which were harmed in her magazine collage.
“There’s something about [reading magazines]. You don’t have your phone with you, your computer. You can’t get distracted,” she said.
But besides the glossy pages of Glamour, her favorite fashion influence is her mother, who always supports the most out-there outfits she wears.
She credits her mother for her fashion rule to live by, “Dress in what makes you happy.”
But every fashionista has a fashion rule they break, hers being “Don’t wear white after Labor Day.”
She said she brings bright whites into fall by wearing it with different textures and darker colors. One of her favorite looks for this transitional time is white linen shorts with a cheetah print top, a light camouflage jacket and brown ankle boots.
Ankle boots are a great way to make nearly any summer outfit work in the fall, especially with a light jacket with rolled sleeves, a scarf and a dark lip color, Plauche said.
She said she adores fall and she’s ready to see the summer ’70s trend transcend into fall with bell-bottom jeans, suede fabrics and boxy pieces.
Fashion blogger Elizabeth “Lala” Vied shares Plauche’s excitement for this season’s trends, especially the different textures and fabrics that are mingling together this fall, like fur, leather and patterned fabrics.
Vied began her blog Lala Land while she studied finance at LSU. Though she’s had a passion for fashion since she was a little girl reading children’s fashion books, she said she fell absolutely in love with the industry while enrolled at the University and decided she’d become a part of it while still a student.
She landed an internship with luxury clothing and accessories brand Oscar de la Renta in New York City last summer. She said she adores the city and wishes to return to it someday, but she knows she needs more experience first.
After graduating in May, Vied left her part-time job at clothing boutique Rodéo and became a junior’s department manager at Dillard’s, while keeping up her blog on the side.
Clothing and accessory companies from across the world send her pieces to be featured in her blog, but Vied said she especially likes working with local boutiques and supporting southern businesses.
Despite her success with fashion labels, Vied said she’s mostly touched by her blog’s followers.
“My biggest goal is just to be an inspiration to other women and girls,” she said. “I don’t necessarily see myself wanting to push blogging as a career, as a business to make money, but really just as a hobby and as a personal goal to just to help other women try new things with style and their own personality … The biggest accomplishment through blogging is reaching people.”
Even with attention from followers, she said she remains shy.
“I feel like my style and my clothing kind of speaks for me. I wear loud colors and patterns just because I have a big personality, but I don’t like to speak it,” she said.
Vied loves to Instagram for her blog, but she said she could never be on video for YouTube or Snapchat.
Palpallatoc explained how social media is essential for a prosperous blog because it acts as a promotional tool, sort of like an advertisement.
“Without social media, my business wouldn’t even exist,” she said.
Michaela Todaro, a communication studies junior, approaches the blogging realm understanding this.
Though she only started her travel vlog, or video blog, on YouTube three months ago, Todaro has been promoting herself creatively on Instagram for quite some time, she said.
She also uses the Internet to learn her craft.
“YouTube is a big, big learning tool that I’ve grasped onto because it’s free,” Todaro said.
She said she’s currently researching for the best outlet to kickstart her blog, whether that be with a purchase of a domain name, or website, or by signing up with a service like Wix, WordPress or Blogger.
Todaro regrets not starting her blog sooner. She’s put it off for about five years, she said. Had she not procrastinated her blog’s commencement, she believes she’d have a sizable following by now.
She wants her blog to expand beyond her videography and have it showcase her photography and dancing as well.
“I was created to create,” Todaro said.
