After taking time to expand our starting index from 500 manually reviewed fashion blogs to more than 1000, we’ve published the results of our April/May 2011 ranking. What a difference a year makes: while almost none of the influential blogs from our April 2010 listing actually lost influence, there were quite a few that gained influence fast enough to shake up the top 99.

Here’s one… different fashion blog trend: turns out a lot of fashion blogger favorites aren’t that into most fashion blogs.

If you want attention for your new style blog, picking on an existing style blog in some way seems to be rule one in the Mean Girls Guide to Fashion handbook.

Usage of photos found online is an oft debated issue: in 2007 there was the case of Flickr user Alison Chang, who found herself an unwitting model in a Virgin Mobile Australia advertising campaign; the Independent, a popular UK newspaper, ran into problems with Peter Zabulis when they failed to secure permission to feature a photo Zabulis took of snow. More recently, there’s the case of the Associated Press vs. Shepherd Fairey. Though the lawsuit was dropped in January of this year, plenty of issues remain surrounding the usage of photos in derivative works.

Now, two of fashion’s largest companies find themselves facing those questions.