Trending Now: Vlogging adds personal touch to online fashion

With the seasons constantly changing and the pressures of living on a college student budget, it’s hard to keep up with all the latest trends in fashion.

Each week, I will discuss and uncover trends relating to fashion that have been gaining popularity both on campus and in the world. From thrifting to do-it-yourself fashion as well as on-campus trends, I will let you know what’s trending now, why and how.

This week, I step into the world of YouTube and tell you a little about a subject I know somewhat well: Fashion vlogging.

I can change into an entirely different outfit, including shoes, full set of jewelry and a hat to match, in the backseat of a car in record time.

Each week, I drive out with a friend to obscure locations in Southern California, hoping to encounter decent-looking backdrops for my fashion videos. I spend three to four hours each time filming these videos, constantly switching in and out of outfits in a car. I then try to wipe off the sweat beads that accumulate on my forehead, brush the hair out of my face and smile and pose for the camera, as though I hadn’t just spent the last five minutes frantically looking for pantyhose.

This skill, I’d like to think, is simply one of many I’ve acquired these past couple of years through fashion vlogging. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, fashion vlogging, similar to fashion blogging, is documenting personal style in the format of a video log (rather than blog). Mainly done on YouTube, fashion vlogging has gained momentum within the last five years and serves as a different medium for expressing personal style to an online audience.

Fashion video logs include “outfit of the day” videos in which an outfit recently worn is showcased, “haul” videos in which items recently purchased are discussed and “lookbooks” which display several outfits in one video.

And for whatever reason, people, especially young girls, love this stuff.

I think I first realized that people were more interested in my style via video format when I officially decided to make YouTube my main media outlet. I had kept up a blog since 2010 but created my YouTube channel a year later: Eventually, I abandoned my blog to focus solely on vlogging.

I had no expectations or goals for my channel. But as an avid subscriber of many beauty and fashion vloggers myself, I was curious.

My first video was about 30 seconds long, showing off a pair of sky-high platform heels I’d recently purchased and was much too elated about. People found the video, thought the shoes were cool and asked if I could show them how I would style them. I obliged by posting another video and two years later, I am still making videos per viewers’ requests. At the time, I had 10 subscribers. Today, I have more than 120,000.

It is in this way that fashion vlogging, unlike fashion blogging, is very much viewer-based content. As style vloggers, we aim to tailor our videos to a specific audience and demographic; we create content such as “What to Wear on First Dates,” which in the fashion blogging world can also be done but would ultimately seem out of place. Talking for nine minutes or more per video also somehow allows a certain didactic style to form, and the idea is that there is always something to be learned from these videos.

Much like fashion blogging, where there is an audience, there is also money to be made. Style vloggers often work with companies who send sponsored goods to wear in videos. Companies sponsor vloggers to travel to different fashion weeks around the world. They also hire vloggers to host grand openings, launches and parties.

Sometimes they will even pay us to produce specific content, and almost always the clothing and any other products are free.

I believe the rise in companies’ interest in fashion vloggers can be attributed to the fact that the additional elements video logging includes (such as live action/motion and sound) make for a more personal subject. Just the format of a video alone lets viewers see vloggers’ true personalities, revealing little quirks from hand gestures to the way someone pronounces a certain word. While it may still be easy to conceal one’s personality because of the online nature of the act, video makes it a little bit more difficult to do such.

Through video, the act of storytelling becomes more dimensional, complete with voice inflections and reenactments. As style vloggers, we ultimately are able to share stories, an essential component for compelling vlogs, about the pieces we wear. It’s more than just a shirt that we wore on Dec. 31, 2001, as it would typically read on a blog. It’s the shirt that you wore ringing in the new year. It’s the shirt you went to your first bat mitzvah in.

We’re able to not only recap the stories through the items we’ve worn, but sometimes we’re even able to show our viewers exactly what happened that night in those clothes. So when I’m talking about a pair of $200 (sponsored) Jeffrey Campbell shoes, I’m sharing the story of how the first time I wore them, I fell flat on my face in the middle of the night. And with a little luck (or misfortune), I can even provide proof of that night’s mishap via an iPhone clip, allowing viewers to experience the night with me.

It’s this element of being able to relate to or live vicariously through someone else that I think allows vlogging to attract a wide audience; it’s the reason why people can talk about a pair of shoes for 13 minutes and reach more than 100,000 hits on YouTube. And it’s the very reason why companies are reaching out to vloggers to promote their products.

Because despite the singular and somewhat narcissistic nature of fashion vlogging, there is an aspect that allows it to be all-encompassing, personable, relatable and just plain fun.

Who’s your favorite fashion vlogger?