dress: Old Navy long sleeve swing dress (the long sleeve version of this dress I was obsessed with over the Summer)
scarf: zig-zag scarf ℅ Posh'mina
shoes: old from DSW, but these open toed mules from Sole Society are similar & so chic!
A month or so ago I was out with a fellow blogger & she made a statement that caused me some inner-blog reflection. We were shopping & she had found the MOST adorable skirt on the clearance rack. I remarked that the skirt's fun colors/patterns would make for a really pretty blog post, but she replied that no, the skirt would most likely not be featured on the blog, because it was a clearance rack item & she wouldn't be able to link to it with Reward Style (meaning it was older, & probably wouldn't be in stock for people to purchase from her commission links)…
This stopped me in my tracks & has stayed with me over the last few weeks. Why would you not want to share an awesome skirt you found just because you couldn't make any money off of it!?
Since I started down this blogging road 5 years ago, I've seen bloggers that started their sites around the same time as me catapult to internet fame, some pulling in tens of thousands of dollars each MONTH. But along the way many of these same bloggers lost the spark that was the reason I started following them in the first place. Now, after reading some blogs I'm left with the feeling of, "I have to go out and SHOP to create that look" - which has been responsible for some feelings of envy & even inadequacy.
The feeling I want to leave people with after they read my blog is: "Wow, I want to go recreate that in my closet". I know my focus on "closet staples" has been less explicit than it was when I first started blogging, but I still firmly believe in building a strong foundational wardrobe, one that doesn't require you to go out & do massive amounts of shopping each month.
The only new piece in this post is the Old Navy swing dress that I scored on sale for $15, & will be featured in other outfits to come. The other pieces are older, & in the instance of these shoes (which I'm obsessed with), the exact style is not currently available, but I highly recommend this type of shoe & I did enjoy looking for similar styles for you. In this case, I love these shoes, they have been extremely versatile for me, & if you too want shoes like this, I've already started the search for you - linking 1 option above & some more in the shopping gallery below.
So the point? I want to stick true to my "personal style" blog's goal, while I sometimes get carried away with thoughts of "I could totes be making money off of this", at the end of the day, the part of blogging that I enjoy is sharing my outfits, & hearing comments along the lines of: "I have pieces similar to this in my closet & I can't wait to try them in this combination"…
Style doesn't mean purchasing a new item each week, I believe that the truly stylish can create unique outfits using the pieces already hanging in their closet.
What are your thoughts on this battle of the shopping blogger vs. the style blogger? What do you read blogs for? To have a personal shopper? Or to see items that you might already have, styled in a new way?
