#219 Kristina McInnis – Fashion Blogging

Kristina McInnis on Fashion Blogging We're going into the world of fashion today. I know, we're not that fashionable really. However, we have a fashion influencer and blogger as our guest today, Kristina McInnis! She's all the way from Portland, Oregon, and is going to tell us all about fashion blogging and about both her experience of and journey into the fashion blogging world. What interested you in fashion blogging? Originally, Kristina wanted to be a vet. However, she ended up getting an internship with Nordstrom during high school where she was introduced to fashion and people win the industry. She became part of their fashion board, learnt about the different positions within fashion, going to fashion shows. She also had a three-day intensive course where she learnt about marketing, design and was part of a show. That led her to thinking about how she could go down this avenue further. Fashion blogging wasn't something she had initially thought of. However, she worked for a company in New York, called College Fashionista. They employ college students nationwide to talk about fashion, lifestyle and college life. Writing for them monthly gave Kristina an experience of blogging. http://thenext100days.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Kevin-the-fashion-blogger.mp4 Do you make fashion or do you follow it? Kristina definitely has her own style, but she bases her blogs on top trends, podcasts and instagram group feedback. As a result, she can be on top of the news in fashion. She talks about fashion, the lifestyle and she also does interviews with people from different industries that fit into fashion. Essentially, she uses a lot of different influences that she can write about. One of the main things she has to remember is that, despite her not being at college anymore, spring break and other college events are up and coming in people's minds. Therefore, she creates collections for college in this way to keep current with her college readers. Lockdown Kristina is indeed in lockdown in Portland, Oregon. However, she can still go for walks (and so takes her dog!) and there are limitations on numbers in shops, etc. Graham says masks don't do it for fashion but Kristina disagrees! People are getting really creative with it. http://thenext100days.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Masks-and-fashion.mp4 Lots of people are finding a lot of business in this area, especially through making them fashionable items. Kevin, however, is not wearing a mask while he walks his dog. As he noted, being North of Hadrian's Wall means he sees very little people on his walks. He was out for an hour and a half and saw 3 people the other day! And, more of a revelation is this: Graham went out for his first walk outside in 3 weeks! Portland, Oregon It's definitely growing and becoming super busy as people move in. Portland is a hot new place to go to on the West Coast side, an hour from the Oregon coast and 45 minutes from the mountains. So, it's an ideal place for beaches or skiing! What's the next best city from Portland, Oregon? Seattle is 3 hours away - home of Starbucks! What do you blog most about? Her avatar is a mid-twenties graduate, living down town and with a bit of money that she can buy high-priced items with. Kristina tries to write to her whenever she is blogging. She talks a lot of pieces that are dupes of high-end brands. She talks about pieces that are a third of the price of what the branded items may be. She has a particular focus on bags where she compares high-end brands and the dupes that look identical. How did she come up with her avatar? She grabbed a big group of people who had been following her for a while and asked them questions via a paid Zoom meeting. Because these people had been following her for a while, Kristina knew this was definitely her demographic. As a result, she asked them things like what were their spending habits (when do they spend for pleasure),