Made in America | The False Choice
The Business of Blogging | Tavi Gevinson
By now, the whole fashion industry is on a first-name basis with fifteen-year-old Tavi Gevinson. But has she successfully turned her blogging fame into a bonafide business? In our latest installment of The Business of Blogging, we find out about Tavi’s bottom line and how she is managing the various roles she plays, from normal teenager to global blogging sensation and everything in between.
CHICAGO, United States – Of all the figures who quickly rose to international fame and notoriety as fashion blogging took flight a few years ago, the youngest by far – and perhaps the most controversial – was Tavi Gevinson, the pint-sized suburban Chicagoan who started writing a blog called Style Rookie from her bedroom in March 2008 at the age of eleven.
At first, Style Rookie was a mixture of personal reflections, runway reviews and photos about Gevinson’s daily outfits. In October of 2008, Teen Vogue described Tavi as having “dead-on style observations and fearless fashion sense.” Indeed, unlike the more typically pretty clothes worn by most of her blogging contemporaries, Gevinson mixed thrift-store finds with more cerebral pieces from Comme des Garçons and Rodarte.
“I was really obsessed with musicals and I was really into the idea of how [for] each character there is a completely different set of costumes and different style of music and everything, and I guess fashion just went well with that?” Gevinson wonders aloud, at her choice of outfits. It was Tavi’s passionate critiques and honest commentary on the fashion industry and its idiosyncrasies, however, that really set her apart and soon earned her sought-after gigs writing for magazines like Harper’s Bazaar and POP.
Some observers wondered whether Tavi was a hoax, backed by an organised team of managers looking to manufacture an Internet star. But anyone who met Tavi in person quickly realised that she was the real deal. A kind of prodigy, Tavi was polite, charming, articulate and a self-described pop culture nerd, and in many ways, quite unlike anyone else who has ever held the attention of the entire fashion industry.
In recent years, Gevinson has extended her influence well beyond her blog, speaking at conferences, starring in films, appearing in advertising campaigns and, mostly importantly, founding Rookie, “a new site for teenage girls” – part life-guide, part conversation, and part rebellion – of which Ms. Gevinson is the editor-in-chief. And all this before turning sixteen years old.
