Style99 May 2011: The New and Gaining Influential Fashion Blogs

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.

Of the 99 most influential fashion & beauty blogs for the April/May 2011 ranking a full one-third are new to the Style99 from the previous ranking, but it’s worth noting many were included in the previous full index, though they didn’t make the top. In other words, though we say it with each update, there are many blogs not in the top 99 that are still incredibly influential. In the coming days, we’ll cover a few of them, but for now we highlight those blogs building influence at a breakneck pace.


Up 50 Places or More

+58 | Cupcakes and Cashmere

+50 | Independent Fashion Bloggers

 

Up 30 Places or More

+35 | Refinery29

+34 | Garotas Estupidas

+31 | Redcarpet Fashion Awards

+30 | Knight Cat

 

Up 20 Places or More

+28 | Advanced Style

+27 | Love Maegan

+27 | Shoe Blog

+26 | Fashion Gone Rogue

+26 | The Business of Fashion

+22 | Stylelist

+21 | All Lacquered Up


Up 10 Places or More

+18 | Bryan Boy

+18 | Who What Wear

+17 | Jak & Jil

+15 | Les Mads

+12 | The Fashion Bomb

+11 | Sea of Shoes

Incremental Gains

+9 | Selectism

+9 | On the Runway

+8 | Le Blog de Betty

+8 | The Purse Blog

+5 | Fashion Toast

+4 | Style Rookie

+4 | FabSugar

+4 | Purple Diary

+3 | The Cherry Blossom Girl

+3 | the Cut

+3 | Fashionlogie

+1 | Karla’s Closet

Jennine Jacobs may have had a bit of a distraction earlier this year, but it didn’t stop her from organizing the popular Independent Fashion Bloggers conference, Evolving Influence. From the huge year over year jump, the IFB blog’s influence is evolving quite nicely. Sticking with blogs that cover the business aspects of online fashion, the aptly named the Business of Fashion also had a significant gain in influence year over year.

Other blogs gained influence as a result of consolidating content. Refinery29 benefited from a site redesign that brought all of their content together in one super blog. Previously feature and blog content were separated, but they’re now all in one place. Another big blog that gained due to a rollup of content is AOL’s Stylelist. With Luxist and other lifestyle blogs shuttered and rolled into Stylelist (along with the traffic boost from the Huffington Post), the site is actually the most trafficked fashion blog online. Traffic is only one part of our ranking, but the increase has positively affected the number of sites linking to Stylelist as well as the number of people sharing the site.

While personal style blogs like Style Rookie, Fashion Toast and the Cherry Blossom Girl had smaller gains, they also appeared pretty highly on our last ranking list so the significance of the moves shouldn’t be discounted.

New to the Top 99

When compared to the previous ranking, 35 – more than a full third – of the top 99 influential blogs were newcomers. In some cases it was simply a matter of expanding our index. That’s an area we spent considerable time on, and the starting index now contains more than 1000 blogs (previously, it was more than 500). That includes blogs that previously weren’t included like the hilarious Man Repeller, wonderfully crafty P.S. – I Made This and the full on fashion fanaticism of Vogue editor turned style blogger Anna Dello Russo.

In other cases however, it was simply a matter of dedicated efforts from blogs in our older index. In our 2010 blogs to watch, we suggested keeping an eye on Street Etiquette, the men’s personal style blog from Joshua Kissi and Travis Grumbs. Previously not in the top 99, the dapper gents from the Bronx are now ranked number 53. Swedish personal style blog KenzaS was listed within striking distance on the previous ranking and is now in the next place at 54.

Though they didn’t make the top 99, Nerd Boyfriend and Park & Cube were also two of our picks for blogs to watch  and are now within striking distance of the top 99. We know what can happen from there, so never underestimate the blogs that are slightly under the (top level of) influence.

Temptalia 

The Blonde Salad

Style Scrapbook

Styleite

Hel Looks

The Man Repeller

This Is Glamorous

P.S. –  I Made This…

Street Etiquette

Kenzas

MTV Style

Put This On

Hanneli 

Elle News Blog (US)

Afrobella

Tokyo Fashion

Blondinbella

Japanese Streets

Fashion Squad

Denim Blog

Makeup Geek

Mrs. O

Styleclicker

Anna Dello Russo

Style by Kling 

Fashionismo

A Blog to Read

The Budget Babe

Pandora

Because I’m Addicted

Tendances de Mode

Hint Mag

Honestly…WTF

My Daily Style

My Fashion Life

View the April/May 2011 Style99 for links and detailed ranking information on each blog.






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