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Personal style blogs sit at the nexus of a range of oppositional concepts that become fluid, that enmesh or are realised in tension on the style blogosphere: public/private, amateur/professional, individual/corporate, intimacy/distance. These qualities are mapped and analysed throughout this thesis, the first comprehensive overview of the practice of personal style blogging. Central to my study is the question: what do style bloggers and their readers think they are doing? Furthermore, what does style blogging mean to them, and what implications does it have for wider concepts surrounding writing, reading, the performance of selfhood, and the communication of fashion knowledge? My thesis defines personal style blogs in relation to the wider field of fashion blogging, before tracing its emergence as a discrete sub-genre through the digital archive and mapping two concurrent but fundamentally different waves of style blogging. From there, each chapter engages with a specific aspect of the style blogosphere: style blogs as intimate spaces for the realisation of feminine sociality and identity play; the intimacy-at-a-distance that occurs between style bloggers and their readers; the performance of a self becoming through fashion in the practice of outfit posting; and the struggle for legitimacy and capital, both within the field of fashion and within the style blogosphere, as the new challenges the old. By drawing on a range of methodological approaches, including participant observation, critical analysis, and interviews, this thesis provides a comprehensive overview as well as a detailed consideration of the practice. This project draws from a wide range of disciplines (including performance studies, anthropology, sociology, fashion theory, and gender studies) to explore themes of the performance of identity, the convergence of space and place on digital realms, the dual intimacy and distance inherent in digital readership, and the blurring between public and private being enacted on these sites of performed selfhood.
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