FASHION BLOGGING- WAY TO MAKE MONEY

Fashion is a site of cultural production where issues of gender,  and consumerism meet. While the rhetoric of the fashion industry often remains focused on innovation at the expense of women lived experiences, independent fashion bloggers provide a necessary cultural critique of its practices. However, as the fashion industry pays more attention to bloggers in order to engage their growing readership, bloggers’ oppositional role has become more complicated. To explore the current context of these women’s writing in relation to a powerful economic industry, I analyze the role that ethos plays as a rhetorical concept and analyze how it is used by female bloggers who write about women’s fashion. In light of recent scholarship and of the current media landscape, bloggers’ use of ethos is important to their work even as it is complex and contradictory.

The growth of the blogosphere in recent years has led to the development of niche communities within larger parts of the web. In this case, “fashion blogs” in the general sense are those that discuss some specific part of the fashion world. However, there are also now street style blogs, shopping blogs, fashion blogs and personal style blogs. The small community of bloggers I analyze in this study usually refer to themselves as the personal style, beauty or body image blogs. They share an interest in clothing that extends beyond simply reporting trends or providing opinions on current styles; these bloggers also address topics like personal budgeting, sustainable clothing design and the need for more diversity in advertising. This emphasis on a reflective lifestyle is, in fact, one of the characteristics that most differentiates this group of blogs from other types of fashion blogs and also from the ethos of mainstream fashion magazines.