Style bloggers get personal about fashion

Unlike famous street fashion blogs like the Sartorialist or Garance Doré, these personal style bloggers keep the focus almost entirely on themselves. Even when they aren't posting photos of their latest ensembles they offer up personal responses to runway shows or editorial fashion spreads, present DIY projects such as make-your-own gradient tights, or simply post images -- their take on the designer's inspiration board.

Their posts almost always catalog each item of clothing they're wearing and where it was purchased -- usually an affordable mix of H&M, Forever 21, American Apparel and "thrifted" pieces, plus an occasional designer accessory. They link obsessively to each other and leave comments like, "Insane jumpsuit! Those shoes are perfect chunkiness."

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For the curious and open-minded reader, the best of these blogs are a real-life fulfillment of the promise Lucky magazine once made to its readers: that the editors would vet the wide world of shopping and help the average female sort out where to splurge and how to find great clothes on the cheap. "Vogue, Bazaar or Elle, they put together an outfit and the four pieces together total $4,000. Then they put it on a willowy anorexic 14-year-old and the underlying message is, 'You aren't pretty enough, you aren't thin enough and you aren't rich enough,"' said Judy Aldridge, the 46-year-old style blogger behind Atlantis Home. "But the blogs say, 'You can go to the thrift stores, or you can buy Christian Louboutin, and this is how you wear it.' "

Kelly Framel, a 25-year-old stylist in New York who started up her blog the Glamourai in September and says she gets about 4,000 hits a day, says that she doesn't write about her work in the high-end fashion world because "it is not something that translates to people my own age." Instead, she says, "I write about the more personal relationship I have with fashion."

When she finds palazzo pants at Forever 21 (noting, "I can't get enough of these -- they make me feel like Talitha Getty!") her readers cheer her on and maybe run out to buy the same pair for themselves. And in a world where not enough people respect those pants (and how difficult they can be to style) or admire the skill it takes to wear a black tutu and make it look almost normal (as a 19-year-old blogger recently did), it is satisfying to find an appreciative audience.

"It sounds really stupid to say it, but it is a lot of work to get dressed in the morning," Chaaban said.