Margaret Zhang, Shine by Three
Sophia: so let’s start with a generic
question, how did you start fashion blogging?
Margaret: it was actually really
spontaneous and organic. I received an email about the updated blogging
platform at blogger and just thought I check it out and decided that I want to
start one. It started nothing like it is now. It was just an image feed. And
then one day I decided just to take a photo of what I was wearing because I
liked what I was wearing and the readers I had gathered so far, they really
liked that [and then asked] ‘could you do this more often?’ and after that I
discovered that there was already a small world of fashion blogging in America
and Europe. Me and a couple of other girls who I’m really close with now, we
were the first in Australia to sort of pick up on that. I think that it’s so
interesting that people can have a similar thought process isolated from each
other. I’ve been doing it for two years now
Sophia: what do you think is the purpose of
your blog now?
Margaret: I see it as a way of
communicating with other young girls and people who are interested in fashion.
I communicate my personal style that not everybody’s going to like. With every
outfit post I do there are people who like it and who don’t like it. People who
would say ‘I would wear it a different way’ and that’s great. I love to generate
that sort of conversation. And I also love to share new talent that I find, I
think our industry is so heavily driven by brand names, American brands, and
just obsessed with the label. People aren’t as concerned about quality and the
actual aesthetic of a piece. Some people would just ride off something
beautiful simply because it’s not a nice brand. I think it’s really important:
I mix vintage, I mix high street, like I’ll save up for something and I’ll mix
it with my Minkpinks and Saveus and whatever, and people appreciate that, like
I try to keep it as close to what my personal style is, I’ll take a photo,
literally just go home from uni and take a photo of what I’m wearing that day.
People like to see that, people like to see you as a real person and in
comments they are always having a conversation. And of course when I interview
people, I interview brands that I really believe in, and being able to share
that with readers and being able to share events with readers is really good
for them.
Sophia: what is your style personality? Do
you have a coherent style or are you just everywhere?
Margaret: I’m pretty eclectic. I mean if
you go through my outfit post you’d be like ‘what is wrong with this girl’. My
friends come over and look at my wardrobe and they’re just like ‘this cannot
belong to the same person’. I am very aesthetic-driven, if I wake up one
morning and decided that I really want to wear a certain skirt, I would work
everything around that skirt. I’m not trying to follow trends. I don’t really
dress for the brand, I dress for the shapes or the colours, the theme that I’m
wearing that day, and my mood.
Sophia: you kind of answered this a little
already but, where do you get your clothing?
Margaret: I’m really lucky that I
collaborate with a lot of brands who see value in what I’m doing by giving me
clothing to share with my readers. But again I only work with brands that I’m
personally passionate about. And it’s such a benefit for me to be working with
them because it’s also content for me. Honestly, as a full time student, we
don’t have money. I can honestly say that if I had to buy everything that I
own, I’d be in debt. Fashion is expensive. When I was younger I was wearing so
much vintage, and I still do, I recycle that vintage. But the beauty of it is
that I can incorporate things that people make available to me and incorporate
it in to my style. I like to challenge myself, when someone gives me something
that I would just never ever thought of wearing, but I look at it and I’m like
ok, well, I actually like it as a piece, how can I make it me. How can I make
it coherent with all of my stuff? I think that’s why some smaller brands are so
attracted to bloggers because for them it’s valuable, giving away one little
piece isn’t the biggest sacrifice for them, but for them to have a real piece
styled by a real person and for readers to be like ‘oh, ok so there’s a way to
wear it other than what the model was wearing’. Because images are beautiful,
models are beautiful, lookbook models are beautiful…but it’s so hard for girls
to relate. It’s really hard, especially for people who aren’t creative, it’s
really hard for them to look at a photo of a model and like ‘ok, so I can wear
it in this way’, because a lot of the time runaway and designers forget that
they need to appeal to the consumer group and they just get really creative and
outrageous. Stuff that’s not wearable everyday. But when you make it wearable
and people see that you can actually wear it they are more likely to buy it and
experiment by themselves. It’s not that they want to copy your style, they just
need that push to experiment.
Sophia: can you describe the fashion
blogging scene and community in Australia?
Margaret: Australia’s really slow on the
uptake. Australia’s really far behind. Having been overseas and seen what
happens in Europe and New York, we are just so slow. Blogging is not recognised
as a profession yet, so if I got a job through my blog I would be hired as a
stylist, I would be paid as a stylist, but I wouldn’t be paid as a blogger. Or if
I was doing freelance writing, I would be paid as a writer and not a blogger.
That’s something that is definitely going to change in the next five years.
It’s already happening at the States: people are getting paid as bloggers and
as personalities to be at places…it’s a career. Most of the Australian bloggers
who have some influence, we all know each other and we’ve all spoke and we meet
at events and we see each other at fashion week and stuff. Some of us are quite
close to each other, quite friendly. Most of the girls on the network I’m on
[Fellt] right now, we’re all very close and it’s nice to have a community. It’s
good because none of us are really competitive with each other because everyone
has such diverse content, which I think is unique to Australia, there’s nowhere
else in the world that has that unique content. That spread of content. There
are always people overseas who are directly competing with each other for the
same readers, and for the same brands. I think it’s really good for us because
there’s no reason to be catty or anything like that. We all get along, and we
all work with some of the same brands together but we always put our own spin
on it. Like the Miss Shop Blogger project, it’s always beneficial for the
brand.
Sophia: how would you compare fashion blogs
to fashion magazines?
Margaret: They are quite different. The
language in magazines, you don’t find that on blogs. People who work at
magazines are trained writers, trained journalists who write in a certain way,
conscious of who they’re writing to and who they’re working for. It’s quite a
refined art. I write a lot more than any other blogger on my network, out of
all of us, I do the most writing. Fashion blogging is very heavily dependant on
visuals, so they are people who read what you write but on the most part people
just look at your images. Which is different [to magazines] obviously. Magazines
are a lot more impersonal because they need to reach a wider range of people.
They’re a lot more organised and they are a lot less updated. I mean the
conflict between magazines and bloggers is that we can get content up that day
and they get content in their magazine in a month’s time. Magazines are very
impersonal and it’s aspirational. Blogs are aspirational too, like when Rumi
wears a Celine jacket, I can’t afford that, I could buy a car with that, it’s
aspirational but it’s still personal because she’s still writing in her
personal voice. You know it’s her who’s writing. Magazines force things on
people and they don’t ask for feedback, it’s just not a very organic approach.
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