The Very Thought Of It: Evolution of the blog

I launched this blog in July 2008. Eleven and a half years ago. My first few posts were a collection of emails I sent to friends and family from when I was traveling the world with a good friend, in between finishing university and starting the ‘real world’. The emails kind of went viral. Friends and family sent them far and wide, hence why I decided to publish them.

That was my first taste of blogging. It was very different back then. A blog wasn’t a space to make money from, to put affiliate links in or even to post outfit pictures. Affiliate links didn’t exist. #ads weren’t even in seedling stage. It was just a text diary. Limited functionality. You could put a picture in, but you couldn’t even resize it. It was basic. But I loved it.

Then slowly things started to develop. Google happened. Twitter launched. Brands started to take notice, and that was simply because the handful of us that were blogging regularly about fashion searched for email addresses of PRs and reached out, sheepishly. ‘I wondered if you could send me high res pictures of your new campaign? I’d love to post them on my blog!’ That was basically your standard way in. The first replies I got, I was over the moon about. Up until that point, it was print magazines ONLY. What was a blog? Who’s reading them? Is ANYONE reading them?

I remember vividly the first time a brand spoke about payment in return of coverage. It was River Island - I don’t remember the year, but was very early on in my blogging ‘career’ (career in adverted commas because blogging was definitely NOT seen as a job back then, it was merely a hobby. No one even dreamt it could be anything more.) River Island offered a few of us £200 to post and talk about their newest campaign. TWO HUNDRED POUNDS! To post on my blog! WTF!

Slowly, blogging became a thing. We worked hard, posting 2/3/4 times a day, still only about things we were passionate about (good and bad), still really only a diary. We were invited to events, launches, trips abroad. Fashion week tickets started to arrive and we covered almost every show on our blogs. Each season we trundled off to the show tent, excited about the collections we were about to see. There was a huge buzz. It was amazing.

In 2013, some of my good friends in the blogging world and I were chosen by the British Fashion Council to sit on the ‘bloggers committee’ which was meant to be a panel to advise the BFC on how to engage with bloggers. Really though, it was just them ticking a box. We quickly found out that we were just used as ‘faces’ rather than experts. We had a group shot taken, and a press release was sent out in September 2013 announcing: ‘Last season alone over 2 000 bloggers registered to attend London Fashion Week… the British Fashion Council has initiated an open channel of communication with a working party of bloggers who represent a cross section of some of the UK’s most successful fashion blogs.’

The BFC considered mine as one of the most successful blogs? I couldn’t quite get my head round it.

Unsurprisingly, the BFC’s Blogger Committee came to absolutely nothing. In fact, to this very day, bloggers are still looked down upon when applying for London Fashion Week accreditation and when requesting fashion show tickets.

Fashion journalists hated us. They thought we were taking their jobs away from them, when in reality, we were doing something completely different. We wanted to work in tandem with them, they wanted us OUT the door. Brands used to put on ‘press events’ and separate ‘blogger events’. Press would go during the day for a slap up meal, us bloggers would go for a walk around a show room.

Things started to change, slowly. People were sceptical, but there was no denying it… blogging was going mainstream.

I never actually blogged full time. Meaning, it was never my only job. I always held a full time position somewhere else. For me, being a guy, it was too risky. It was clear that women were getting the lion’s share of work and opportunities, and that was simply down to the fact that brands were focussing on their womenswear collections more. Luckily, I blogged mostly about women’s fashion.

My blog has gone through different stages and designs: I’ve gone from blogging every day for years to going without posting a thing in weeks. It’s looked shit and it’s looked great. I’ve had contributors and I’ve filmed videos. I’ve blogged some questionable things and I’ve gotten exclusives. I’ve done a lot as a blogger. And then Instagram launched, and things changed once again. People stopped reading blogs. It was all about pictures. ONLY about pictures. Captions got smaller, magazines started to close and people struggled to keep up.

I’ve often thought about closing down the blog, many times. I’ve watched some peers shut down their sites, but I just can’t. This blog has afforded me EVERYTHING in my career. Yes, I trained as a journalist. Yes, I worked in magazines for a long time. But really, having this blog has been my calling card: it has got me to fashion weeks around the world, got me writing gigs for brands and national titles, it has got me interview time with celebs I’ve idolised and presenting slots for online TV channels I’ve loved. I’ve been to New York, Paris, Sweden and Amsterdam with some of my favourite brands and PRs. I won the Cosmopolitan Magazine’s Male Blogger of the Year Award in 2012. I’m not trying to list everything I’ve ever done and achieved - I really don’t have a big ego - I’m just trying to illustrate how this blog has changed my life.

And now, in 2020, I feel the blog deserves another reincarnation. I’ve taken a step back from posting, but I’m trying to do more. I’ve redesigned it and got a new logo (thank you SO much to my friend Dom&Ink). I’ve asked some friends to write articles for me, not just about fashion, but body positivity, self love and other important topics, so stay tuned. In short, I love this blog and everything that has come from it. I actually still love the act of blogging too: researching, finding pictures, hunting out stories. I don’t think that will ever go for me.

This is The Very Simon G 2.0. Nothing groundbreaking, but just humble and moving with the times.

Thanks for sticking around.