Fashion 101: Growing a Local Fashion Community

Indiana Adams being interviewed for News 8 Austin. Photo by Brooke Moreland.

This weekend while in Austin, Texas for the South by Southwest interactive festival, I had the great pleasure of taking part in the first-ever New Media Fashion Brunch and Boutique Crawl.

This event, which was put together by Indiana Adams, creator of the popular style blog Adored Austin, aimed to draw together fashion bloggers, local media, and innovators from the Austin, Texas fashion community and beyond. Austin- a town where flip-flops and UT football t-shirts are de rigueur- is known many for its thriving music scene and proliferation of barbecue joints, not it’s fashion. But that is changing. And it is changing in towns and cities all over the world.

Personal style bloggers, equipped with a DIY ethos, self-confidence, exhibitionism and boatloads of creativity are broadcasting their style for the world to see and inspiring others to do the same.

I decided to sit down with Adams and ask her a few questions about the Fashion blogging phenomenon and what people can do to foster a lively style community in their town.

You started your blog in 2009. Did you follow other personal style bloggers and then get inspired to start your own? Or did you just start blogging about your interests and then discover the entire world of personal style bloggers later?

When I started my blog, I was reading Jessica over at What I Wore, Katy at Kansas Couture, and Jane from Sea of Shoes. I had absolutely no idea that there were things like Lookbook.nu, Chictopia, and Weardrobe and that most of the women on those sites had their own little fashion blogs, too. Within a week of starting my blog, I had added over 100 other fashion bloggers to my Google reader, and thus, my mornings have never been the same.

Since you started blogging a year ago, have you seen the landscape for fashion bloggers change? Are more people starting personal style blogs now that when you started? If so, what do you think about that? Do you think that everyone who wants to should take outfit photos and blog their style, or do you think with so many blogs the good ones get lost in the shuffle?

When I started mine, to my knowledge, I was the only one doing this consistently (i.e. almost daily) here in Austin. Now there are at least ten of us, and I imagine that other cities and suburban and rural areas are experiencing similar growth. I find all this very exciting. Women are finding inspiration from style bloggers versus just fashion magazines and catalogs now. It’s incredibly refreshing to be able find someone that shares your budget and aesthetic and get inspiration from the way they wear their clothes.

Should anyone be allowed to start a fashion blog? Absolutely. However, bloggers should be aware that if they start their site with the sole intention of gaining exposure, they’ll find themselves in a frustrating uphill battle to differentiate themselves from all the other blogs (and the more established ones). It’s important to do your blog for yourself and to stay focused on something other than readership numbers. I like to focus on building stronger relationships with the readers I already have and connecting with them outside my blog through email, their blogs, and Twitter.

AdoredAustin.com screenshot by Brooke Moreland.

I really like how your blog is about you. You showcase your style, your personal thoughts and views, but you seem to have really connected with both the online fashion community and your local community in Austin. Can you tell me how you got involved in the community of bloggers on the web? Also, how you became a part of so many cool events in Austin? Did that all happen because of your blog? (sorry for the 3 part question!)

Thank you for liking my blog! I think I was able to get connected early on because I left funny, relevant comments on the blogs I admired without leaving links to my blog in the comments. I didn’t want to be THAT girl that leaves comments for everyone basically saying, “Oh, I love your style and your blog. Now here’s a link to MY blog! Please, please, please go visit it!” However, early on, when I did get a comment back from a well known blogger or was linked on anyone’s site, I sent super sincere thank you notes. I still get super excited when anyone links me, adds me to their RSS feeder, or follows me on Twitter.

As for getting involved in community events, it absolutely has everything to do with Adored Austin. My goal was to make Austin the prima ballerina of my blog, so I try to get out there to showcase what’s going on in this amazing city as often as I can. Although it’s a big city, Austin still very much has a small town mentality. I love that I can’t go to the grocery store without meeting someone who reads my blog, and I love that people invite me to their events so I can show the rest of the world how cool Austin is.

You have put together this brunch and boutique crawl event. What made you want to do it, and how did you pull it all together? What was involved?

With South by Southwest coming up, I knew there’d be a number of people from out of town who I’d want to meet. Additionally, with the influx of all the new Austin fashion bloggers, I knew they would all like a place where they could meet everyone, too. Instead of hogging everyone to myself, I wanted to create a little shindig where we could all meet each other. I had the idea that we could go shopping together, then I had the idea that the bloggers could all invite their readers. It started snowballing, so I brought on some sponsors to help put it on and hopefully we’ll have a new annual event on our hands!

Austin hasn’t always been thought of as a fashion hub, but it seems like more and more stores, fashion magazines and cool events are coming here. How do you think other people that are living in places outside major metropolitan areas can start to form communities and events and nurture their style communities where they live?

The main reason why I started reading Kansas Couture is because Katy is from Kansas, which is also an area not really known for its fashion. She wears shoes and accessories from Payless, buys her denim at TJ Maxx, and cobbles together the most amazing outfits from other affordable store and thrift finds. Additionally, she puts on fashion shows in her town. She’s a true example of “if you build it, they will come” in that she created a fashion niche for herself and other like-minded individuals when it didn’t seem to exist in her geographic location.

Austin, while not like New York, LA, or Miami, is still a fashion-forward city, though. We just like to mix in our cowboy boots. I think our eclectic style has been under the radar for a while, but with events like SXSW and Austin City Limits, the rest of the country is starting to notice that we’re not wearing chaps and spurs over here.

Congratulations on being pregnant! How do you think being pregnant will effect your blogging? Are you excited about maternity fashion? Do you read any pregnant women’s style blogs? Have you thought at all about crossing into the world of ‘mommy blogging’?

I’m excited to be a mom, and as much as I want to say that being pregnant won’t change Adored Austin, I’m finding myself cutting back a little to nap more and to eat insane amounts of pickles. Before I got pregnant I was doing an average of 15 posts per week. Now I’m batting closer to seven, but my content is still the same.

I am not excited about maternity fashion, though. Yuck-o. I am excited about trying to figure out how to turn the clothes I already own into cute baby bump wear, though. I got a lot of inspiration from Melissa over at Dear Baby on how to look less house-like while with child. My buddy Jen from JenLovesKev is also pregnant, so I’m excited to be able to figure that out with her, too.

As for starting a mom blog? Done. I’m trying to keep Adored Austin on the same path it’s on now, and I’m also trying to be sensitive to my readers that hate babies and pregnant women, so I’ve created TheWonderLove.com for annoying things like sonograms and recaps of doctor visits.

Your main job is being an actress, correct? Do you think having a personal blog raises your visibility in a way that is good for your acting career?

I used to have a hilarious blog about acting and auditioning, but that blog got shut down because one of my agents was all like, “You can’t blog about work. You need to be professional. What if a client sees your blog and blah blah blah…” I feel a little safer with this blog even though I still write about auditions. So far it hasn’t seemed to help or hinder me in terms of acting, but I have used it to raise awareness about one of the films I wrapped last fall.

Are you planning to make your blog a full time business? Or do you think it will always be a side project with your acting?

I’ll be honest here: I’ve gone back and forth with the idea of making Adored Austin my livelihood. I have so much fun doing it, and when I think about myself five years from now, I can still see myself doing something like it . Although Adored Austin is new, I’ve been blogging since 1999. However, I have turned down most of the advertising inquiries I get because they don’t quite fit my own personal budget or my style aesthetics. Ultimately I’d like to marry my love for Adored Austin with my love for performing. I’d love to have a weekly morning news segment, a web series, and a local tv show.

What are some of your greatest sources of style-inspiration on the web?

I read an mind boggling amount of fashion blogs every morning, but some of my favorites are What I Wore, Kansas Couture, This Time Tomorrow, Idee Geniale, Delightfully Tacky, Selective Potential, Kendee Everyday, Orchid Grey, and Second Skin. I also pore over the people on Weardrobe, Chictopia, and Fashism [editor's note: Fashism is co-run by the author of this post]. All in all, I probably spend way too much time online, but so far, I have no regrets!