The By-Gone Blogging Days

Let me just start this post by saying how much I miss bloggers.  Gone are the days when I saw a dress and fell hopelessly in love, all I had to do was type in the name of the dress to Google's image search and low and behold a blog would pop-up with tons of photos of the dress: the store display, being worn, being styled. and an accompanying review.  And now? Gone.  All Gone.

And back in the waaay back, a person could pretty much devote themselves just to one brand or shop and it was fine.  One of my favorite blogs was called Effortlessly Anthropolgie.  My girl, Roxy, just went into Anthropologie with each new collection release and tried stuff on and took pics in the mirror and then wrote reviews about how everything felt and looked.  And I trusted what she, a real person with a real body, had to say more than a store description and photos of a model.

The best part of it was that it was out there forever, so even when the dress left stores and moved into the resale realm, you could still look up the reviews and see how it looked and decide whether or not it was worth the price long after the store's customer reviews had disappeared from the shop.  I loved it and it was tremendously helpful.  And now it's gone.

 

Now, if I see a dress it has to have a huge cult following to make it onto a YouTube review and even then I'm unlikely to find it unless the reviewer has fifty thousand followers.  And don't even get me started on the reviews themselves.  I once watched this greasy haired co-ed eat a cheeseburger in a Matoshi dress and then get some video footage of her cat taking a nap on another, because she "just didn't feel like doing a try-on" of that one.  Disgusting may be too harsh of a term to describe it, perhaps disappointing and underwhelming are better but no less accurate.   Most aren't nearly as bad as that, but they're also not nearly as thorough as blog reviews used to be.

I get it; our attention spans are too short to read a six paragraph review, but I still want the details, the all angles photos and the line after line of description. It's why I've kept my own blog for all these years in spite of scaling it back.  It's also why so many people steal my photos and use them when they're reselling their clothes.  It's way easier to track down my photos than it is to try scrolling through Instagram hoping to stumble across a pic of the dress you're selling.  I don't mind when people use my pics, I only wish they'd give me credit, but that's a whole other story.

So, in honor of fashion blogging, all that it was, and all that it has meant to so many fashion lovers out there, let me give a quick review of this out-of-stock Selkie Coat of Arms Cottage Puff dress just in case you find it on a resale site like I did and don't know anything about it or ever remember seeing it in the store.  This dress features a lightweight cotton layer on top and two organza skirt layers underneath in matching print.  The bodice is lined in yellow cotton and the dress fits true to size.  I ordered a size small and it was approximately two sizes too big, so I altered it myself.  This dress is also very short, so I'm sporting cotton bloomers underneath.  With this neckline it's almost impossible to find a bra that doesn't peek out, so save yourself some time and just find one that looks pretty when it does show.  Originally priced at $295, this dress isn't easy to find on the resale sites, but I see them here and there for a significantly reduced price, so if you did miss out, don't give up.

Shopping Info:  Selkie Coat of Arms Cottage Puff Dress from Poshmark, Harriseve Flats from Amazon, Collectif Strawberry bag