Fashion blogs are blogs that cover fashions in clothing and fashion accessories.

Definition

A fashion blog is solely or primarily dedicated to coverage of fashions in clothing and accessories. This includes blogs about:

• runway trends
• fashion items, e.g. shoes, handbags
• celebrity fashion
• street style outfits worn by regular people.Corcoran, Cate T. Blogging for bags, "Women's Wear Daily", October 23, 2006.Weil, Jennifer with contributions from Corcoran, Cate T. and Moir, Jane. In their sites, "Women's Wear Daily", June 29, 2006.

There are blogs covering fashion at all levels, from big labels and indie designers to clothing found on the street.

Many fashion blogs could also be categorised as shopping blogs as "most of the conversation is shopping advice, liberally laced with consumer recommendations", and some fashion retailers have now started blogs of their own to promote their products.

Blogs that occasionally mention fashion, such as many "personal diaries of teenagers", are not categorised as fashion blogs.Dodes, Rachel. "Bloggers get under the tent", The Wall Street Journal, September 12, 2006. Accessed November 18, 2006.

Impact on the fashion industry

Fashion is a multi-billion-dollar industry that has considerable impact on the way ordinary people clothe themselves. As fashion is trend-driven and fashion blogs provide a new way to follow these trends, it is likely they will have a considerable long-term influence on the industry.

These are some of the things fashion journalists have said about fashion blogs and the impact they are having on the industry:

• "These days, to have one finger on the fashion pulse, you need to have the other one on your computer mouse, reading (or writing) the latest blogs."Kay, Karen. The fashion blog stars, "Daily Mail", January 15, 2007. Accessed January 22, 2007.
• "Before a designer's runway show has even finished, you can bet your bottom dollar that someone in the audience – or better still, backstage – has recorded every silhouette, signature shoe, styling detail and sulking supermodel, then uploaded it onto the internet for style watchers across the globe to Enjoy."

Number of fashion blogs

There is considerable disagreement regarding the number of fashion blogs in existence.

In a February, 2006 Women's Wear Daily article, Corcoran stated:

There is an enormous, and growing, number of fashion and shopping-related blogs: about 2 million, according to Technorati Inc., 1 or slightly less than 10 percent of the 27 million blogs the company tracks. (That number includes blogs in languages that use the Roman alphabet and that contain anything fashion-related, including sites such as Pink Is the New Blog, which focuses on celebrities.)Corcoran, Cate T. The blogs that took over the tents, "Women's Wear Daily", February 6, 2006.