Fashion bloggers seem to be causing something of a storm within the fashion industry. It has long been acknowledged that many fashion houses and brands look to popular blogs for inspiration or indicatioms of emerging trends. Two posts this week particularly caught my attention on this point, first IFB’s post Are Style Bloggers Impacting Retail Trends in which Colleen Sherin, the Senior Fashion Director at Saks Fifth Avenue, discussed the emerging trend of “The Extreme Cross-Shopper”. According to WWD, “The Extreme Cross-Shopper” will spend big bucks at high end stores whilst mixing it up with purchases at heavily discounted shops too. IFB wondered if this might be influenced, in part at least, by the rise in style bloggers who have mastered the art of mixing high and low end pieces.

The second post, was over at Fashion Editor at Large and asked, Will You Wear The ‘Blogger’ Trend? It would seem that River Island has named one of its trends for AW12 as “blogger”. Whilst IFB have identified a trend for mixing high and low end pieces, River Island have identified the “more is more” look as intrinsically linked to the “blogger look”. The FEAL tells us that the press release from River Island identifies the look as ‘organised chaos’ and ‘freestyle’ and they sum up the look as “disorganised but carefully put together”.

Personally, the blogger trend for mixing high and low end pieces is a very real concept. I think this is particularly true as bloggers “grow up” – so to speak. Generally we don’t have a limitless budget to spend on clothes and accessories but I believe that fashion bloggers know the value of well-made pieces. In such a way I think there is a culture of saving up for special pieces and hunting out bargains where necessary. As the for “more is more” trend, I think this is perhaps not quite to wide-spread and that this may be more of a trend borne out of the emergence of popular street style fashion blogs, such as Jak&Jil and The Sartorialist, and the street style pages in fashion magazines, like Grazia and Vogue. What I mean is, I think that the women who subscribe to this look are those who wish to find themselves photographed for these blogs or magazines, rather than necessarily being bloggers themselves. Which means that they only dress like this, really, for one week, twice a year – at Fashion Week.

What are your thoughts? Is there a blogger look? Is this a look which goes beyond bloggers? I.e. does this “blogger look” actually influence anyone other than other bloggers?