Granted it’s the power blogs that consistently take the top spots in our ranking of influential fashion blogs; but using the exact same ranking criteria, bloggers are edging out magazines who (often) have larger staffs and larger budgets when it comes to influencing readers online.

Dolce & Gabbanna's 2-year-old front row lineup seems smarter than ever

That’s not to say magazines aren’t influencing people online: each of the magazine websites we used for comparison would rank in the top 99 if pitted against the fashion blogs in our list. Not to mention that although it took them a while, nearly all of the magazines on the list are actively investing in their websites, rather than using them as digital subscription forms. Glamour created their own blogger network; Elle hired the editor of an influential blog to breathe new life into theirs (a move that’s paid off); and though Style.com is now a property of its own, the former online home to Vogue and W was a big part of propelling the reigning influential fashion blog (the Sartorialist) to where it is now. While magazines aren’t exactly the ostriches they once were when it comes to building an online presence, the fact that a single teenager from the Chicago suburbs is influencing nearly as many people as the entire online staff of Teen Vogue can’t be ignored though.

The reason why we spend so much time on an objective ranking of fashion blogs, however, is precisely because there are people who still do ignore bloggers and independent publishers and try to write off the significant audience shift in fashion media as a passing fad. Print isn’t dead – advertisers will keep it alive; but digital is the future, and it’s a future where a multitude of strong individual voices can rival the influence of a more prominent, institutional few. That said, the structure of influential blogs is increasingly similar to that of print publications, and probably not so different from their online departments. While there are more than a few solo acts topping the rankings, increasingly it’s blogs with multiple editors, writers and support staff competing with and pushing the magazines out of the top spots.

This list of magazine sites isn’t as exhaustive as the index of fashion blogs that we rank. You’ll notice that most are for the US editions of international magazines, but in nearly every case the US editions receive more traffic, link and social activity than their international counterparts so we thought they were a good place to start. In our September update, we’ll examine the influence of international magazine websites compared to bloggers in more depth.

Style.com

Score: 84     Rank if included in the top 99: 2

The former home of Vogue and W helped establish the Sartorialist, so perhaps it’s fitting that if included, the Sartorialist is the only blog that would rival (and top) their influence.

GQ.com

Score: 79     Rank if included in the top 99: 3

The men’s print style bible would just barely push men’s online style bible Hypebeast into 4th place.

Glamour.com

Score: 77     Rank if included in the top 99: 5

Style.com certainly has the strongest lead, but Glamour‘s put a respectable effort into building their online presence with a blogger network and dedicated online content. Looking strictly at current magazine websites, Glamour‘s is the most influential women’s style site in the US.

Elle.com

Score: 74      Rank if included in the top 99: 6

Elle is a few points away from Glamour, but the popular magazine has worked with bloggers through the Style Coalition for some time now, and brought in former Fashionista editor Brit Aboutaleb to lead editorial for their online efforts. The Elle blog is one of the few magazine blogs with enough influence to rank in the top 99 independent of the parent website.

Vogue.com

Score: 73     Rank if included in the top 99: 9

Vogue got off to a late start with their website, and there have been a few notable bumps along the way, but they recently received a Webby and Anna Wintour has been vocal about making the website a priority. For the moment though they still can’t beat Stylelist, the super blog formerly led by AOL, now revamped and revitalized by chief executive blog builder Arianna Huffington.

And men’s style blog High Snobiety leads them both.

MarieClaire.com

Score: 71     Rank if included in the top 99: 10

InStyle.com

Score: 70     Rank if included in the top 99: 11

Allure.com

Score: 70     Rank if included in the top 99: 12

Marie Claire is the closest to catching up with Vogue online, but both InStyle and Allure are only marginally ahead of Refinery29, who are blogging their way towards a $20 million valuation.

Seventeen.com

Score: 70     Rank if included in the top 99: 14

TeenVogue.com

Score: 69     Rank if included in the top 99: 15

Readership for teen print publications has been dropping off for a while, and many people blamed the web. While Seventeen and Teen Vogue are doing well online, they’re only slightly ahead of  the Fug Girls, Garance Dore and Tavi, indicating that teens probably weren’t exactly sitting on their hands while waiting for the print publications to get themselves together online.

HarpersBazaar.com

Score: 66     Rank if included in the top 99: 22

Harper’s Bazaar has never had the circulation of Elle or Vogue, but the pronounced focus on building their online audience hasn’t been there in the same way either. Again, we wouldn’t say they’re exactly suffering on the web, but the entire online Harper’s Bazaar team would still be behind the singular efforts of Yvan Rodic’s FaceHunter, Rumi Neely’s Fashion Toast and Alix of the Cherry Blossom Girl.

LuckyMag.com

Score: 65     Rank if included in the top 99: 23

Of all the major fashion magazines, Lucky’s online site is lowest on the list. Sure, readers are visiting for the Lucky deals and different online shopping collaborations, but the site still has a long way to go. Newly installed editor-in-chief Brandon Holley has print experience and led editorial at Shine, Yahoo’s US-targeted women’s site, so hopefully come September a bit more attention to online partnerships and audience building will lend the beleaguered publisher a little more luck.

Say what you'd like about Alexa Chung, if you're a fashion blogger she won't be reading it anyway.

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

“Blogs are ridiculous; they’re just mood boards – unless you are Tavi [Gevinson, of Style Rookie]”

– Alexa Chung in the June 2011 edition of Vogue UK {via Fashion Foie Gras/Lockerz}

A point of view that it seems the New York Times‘ Cathy Horyn shares.

“Itâ€s a lack of original content. Sooner or later, itâ€s like anything, people change, people look at that and say ‘This is boring.†And some young journalist will come along and distinguish themselves with original reporting. And they will hopefully be fluent in French and very good at reporting whatâ€s going on at the luxury goods companies and the big brands in Europe, because thereâ€s a complete need for that kind of reporting. You can be tough and feisty and a little bit of a guerrilla reporter, for want of a better word, and I think thereâ€s a need for that. I donâ€t think a lot of the blogs are distinguishing themselves by linking and just being snarky or being opinionated. Do some reporting.”

– Cathy Horyn in an interview with ($20 million fashion blog) Refinery29

And even the most influential fashion blogger of them all.

“Iâ€m not really a fan of personal style blogs—you know, the ones [on which] these girls just shoot their outfits and all this stuff. I havenâ€t seen one that I really like or that draws my attention every day. The good and bad of that is that most these girls only have a limited wardrobe; they donâ€t have many clothes to shoot and I donâ€t think most of them have come up with looks that are that interesting, that draw me.”

– Scott Schuman, aka the Sartorialist in an interview with (Style.com fashion blog) StyleFile

Schuman does give some credit to the time capsule that all of the personal style blogs will become in decades to come, but in general let’s remember that “fashion blog” covers a lot of territory these days. As evidenced by the fact that 2 out of 3 of these quotes came from…wait for it… fashion blogs.

To Ms. Horyn’s point, speaking purely from personal experience there are plenty of fashion stories we try to report on, but big brand representatives tend to not reply – not even to give a “no comment” – to people who try to do reporting when they don’t have a major news organization behind them. An example? Sure. For weeks, we reached out to retailers who’d participated in Fashion’s Night Out to try to paint of picture of the real financial impact of Fashion’s Night Out. We love the excitement it generates, but we’re not convinced it’s actually a sales boon for participating retailers. Unfortunately, since no one would comment, we can’t be sure. Another example? You’ve got it. There was an interesting piece in the New York Times (you probably saw it) on the expense that went into producing Marc Jacobs’ most recent show. You know what we were really interested in? What happened to those 1100 yards of vinyl that were brought in for the even after the show. After all, if a company spends that much on props for a show, you’d hope they would find an interesting way to reuse them. Unfortunately, none of our emails or phone calls requesting comment or more information were returned. US or Paris. Not that we’re complaining: there are a lot of emerging fashion companies doing some really interesting things who are happy to reply to us, and more often than not, we learn about them via blogs like the Business of Fashion or FashionablyMarketing.me or by actually getting out to events and doing some reporting.

A new fashion blog comes along every day, so inevitably at some point it becomes difficult to separate the signal from the noise, but let’s not write off an entire category because you tune out for a bit.

The first invitations to the site went out almost exactly one year ago, and in that time it’s gotten pretty popular – about 1.2 million people a month visit to answer personality questions. Hunch’s latest time killing, but fun, service is a Twitter followers analyzer that makes educated guesses about the people following you. The service only works with accounts that have more than 1000 followers right now, which means we couldn’t get anything back for our wonderful readers who follow @Signature9, but our hunch is that if you do you’re gorgeous, brilliant and charming. Gorgeous, brilliant and charming, but not following Signature9? You should click here, click follow and fix that!

Back to the original topic. There’s nothing earth shattering in the revelations – Gilt Groupe followers are likely to be female (we could have gotten that one), but some of them are fun. Here are a few of the odder hunches we found when running some of our favorite Tweetstars through.

The followers of fashion favorites @GiltGroupe @Sartorialist and @InsideDVF would rather ride a Vespa than a Harley.

@NetAPorter followers think alien abductions are real

@Fashionista_com and @GaranceDore followers have mailed a hand-written note, letter or card in the last 6 months

@Karl_Lagerfeld followers: prefer smaller portions of food that are arranged well, have dated or hooked up with someone they met online, choose the New York Times over the Wall Street Journal or USA Today as their free hotel paper of choice, can make reservations in 2 or 3 languages (only at restaurants that don’t overfeed you, of course), aren’t reading Vogue for the articles, think All-You-Can-Eat buffets are gross, are Mac people, and like celebrity gossip, reality TV and awards shows among other things.

Would you rather: George or Mario?

And who do these people consider most attractive out of a Nicole Kidman, Eva Longoria Parker, Mario Lopez, George Clooney lineup? The ladies who follow Lagerfeld love Clooney. @WomensWearDaily and @AmericanApparel followers agree, while @LouisVuitton_US followers prefer Mario Lopez.

Moving on to the foodies, @DavidLebovitz’s followers are also Clooney and Vespa people, frequent flossers, own a single piece of art valued at more than $2500, have something in their closet from Prada, Gucci, or Dolce & Gabbana and like opera.

@ClotildeNet (Clotilde of Chocolate & Zucchini) followers think crossword puzzles are more pleasure than pain, also like opera, and will take a meal prepared at home over one of those small, pretty restaurant dishes.

And what should we know about the people following the Tech Set? @TechCrunch followers will buy you birthday cake from an expensive bakery, gave flowers to someone not including mom, dad, grandma or grandpa in the last 6 months, can deal with roaches, spiders and snakes, but are creeped out by rats (we’re creeped out by all of them), are only reading Playboy for the articles, go for Eva Longoria Parker in the attractive multiple-choice category, and would share their $100+ bottle of wine with her.

@Mashable followers will also make sure you’re not stuck with a grocery store cake, also get the creeps from rats, support charities regularly, and they likely have a famous celebrity or politician on speed dial in their iPhone.

2009 saw Schuman’s first book release, along with a well received collaboration with Burberry on a site with images centered around the British label’s wardrobe staple – the trench coat. The site sustained the initial interest via user uploads and social media tools like Facebook. Most interesting however is that the out the door lines at book signings, the renewed interest in a piece of clothing that has had the same design for decades, are all tangible demonstrations of the impact fashion bloggers can have.

The first Style99 ranked over 250 blogs to determine the most influential among them. This quarter, we increased the number of included blogs to more than 400 with an emphasis on uncovering more non-English language blogs that were having an impact with readers. There are great lists of favorite blogs out there, and lots of metrics, but nothing that made the numbers tell a story.

The rankings methodology has changed slightly, but among the publishers at the very top of the list, not much else has. The first rankings – released in September 2009, included data from blog aggregator Technorati. To give a more balanced ranking that took into account blogs not registered with the service, particularly blogs not in English, the Technorati score has been replaced with one for unique domain links. While large budgets and networks can increase the number of overall links to a site, and conversely the perceived popularity, the number of unique individual sites generally gives a more accurate picture. The rest? Well, that’s still pretty similar: the rankings are heavily weighted towards demonstrated preferences by readers and other bloggers in that order. A large marketing budget may buy traffic, but it doesn’t by influence.

Consider Schuman’s the Sartorialist, which maintains the top spot despite the adjustment in ranking criteria. While unique visitors to the blog certainly aren’t lacking, network behemoths have more traffic, possibly more pageviews and would outperform on standard online media measurements. Among the people who visit the site though, more have bookmarked, blogged and linked to the Sartorialist’s posts than any other blog we came across.  Let it be a message that when it comes to actionable influence, the quality of reader interest matters just as much as the quantity.

Among the top 10% of bloggers ranked, network multi-author blogs (think Breaking Media’s Fashionista, Aol’s StyleList, New York Magazine’s the Cut, Sugar Inc.’s Fabsugar) do appear, but overwhelmingly fashion influence online belongs to publishers with a distinctly individual point of view. Street style bloggers who use everyday settings as their editorial backdrops, girls who share their personal style, guys who share a passion for the latest sneaker release; the list goes on, but the common thread is that the unabashed fashion and beauty fanatics are connecting with readers online in ways that most traditional media companies haven’t been able to.

99 Most Influential Style Blogs – January 2010 {Signature9}

Monitaly’s twist on the standard winter coat is based on the idea of fusing military style with Italian design elements. The combination of deep green with a shock of red can come across very Christmas-y if done wrong, but with the blown out plaid on the structured riders coat- it works wonders. If Refinery29’s guide hasn’t worked for you yet, this is a piece that could land its wearer on the Sartorialist.

Read the full story {SwipeLife}