Not just any fashion blogs either. All of the blogs included in the index used for the ranking are recently up to date (as of March 5th), and have a majority of content focused on fashion or beauty.

Personal style blogs dominate the top 99 – 48% of the blogs are about what certain girls (and  guys) are wearing and wanting, but even within that subgroup there’s a diversity in content. Consider the personal style blogs like Man Repeller and Style Bubble – a blog that’s been in the top 99 of every ranking we’ve done, where the thoughts of the day generate as much interest as the outfit of the day. Then there are sites like Style Like U and the Coveteur where the style is personal, but focused on a different person each week – the ultimate for those looking to shop their own closets for inspiration.

A few highlights from within the personal style category:

Gabi Gregg of Gabi Fresh is the first plus-sized personal style blogger to crack the top 99. Le Blog de Big Beauty is at #101, and incredibly close to pushing through. While the personal style category has a certain formula, the “f*** flattery, I want fashion” approach from both ladies is resonating with readers. Runways may follow an exclusive formula (taller than average, thinner than average, less Asian, Black, Latino or Middle Eastern people than the world actually represents), but readers are showing that style inspiration comes in a diversity of shapes, sizes and colors. We can only hope designers and brands eventually take note.

Camila Coutinho of Garotas Estupidas is the top personal style blogger in this ranking. In Fall 2012’s ranking she entered the Top 10, and continued to climb to number 4 overall with a mix of personal and celebrity style. She leads the Brazilian bloggers, who represent the largest number of non-US bloggers in the top 99 – something remarkable in the fact that none of the Brazil-based blogs are translated into English. With national audiences alone, Portuguese speaking readers are pushing these independent publishers to levels most often achieved through international expansion (through English-translated) content. Parabens! to all of the stylish girls from São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and beyond. We don’t have a girl or boy from Ipanema in the top 99 just yet, but there’s no doubt there will be soon. Beyond the top 99, blogs 100-199 have a strong Brazilian presence as well.

Personal style newcomers to the top 99 include Keiko Lynn at #99, Revenge star Ashley Madekwe at #98, Olivia Palermo at #96, Julie Sarinana of Sincerely Jules at #83, Karla Derass of Karla’s Closet at #82, Bruna Vieira of Depois dos Quinze at #50 Wendy Nguyen of Wendy’s Lookbook at #63, Laureen Uy of Break My Style at #61, and Camille Co of Camille Tries to Blog (she’s doing more than trying) at #25.

Among the guys, Pelayo Diaz of Kate Loves Me proves that the only bad publicity is no publicity, and moves to #65 (previously #83). Joshua Kissi and Travis Gumbs of Street Etiquette move up 7 spots to #31.

While a visual response to the “what are you wearing?” question is one of the surest ways to building a successful audience, it doesn’t always have to be about one person.

Newcomers outside of the personal style category include Black Fashion (#89), Fifi Lapin (#76). We’re almost certain Fifi is the first rabbit, and non-human to make the list. Take that fashion cats!

As for top movers and shakers, no one moved more than Ari Seth Cohen‘s street style blog focusing on a certain demographic.

Advanced Style, which focuses on style from the 60+ set jumps to #2 worldwide on the strength of strong social engagement, proving that when it comes to style, size and age are nothing but numbers. At least according to the numbers (read more about the methodology here).

Vogue

Lucky magazine recently launched the Lucky Style Collective, a network that will make a network of fashion and beauty bloggers true partners of the magazine. {NY Times}

In contrast to the Vogue network, which is closer to a consumer panel than actual network, the Lucky Style Collective will see bloggers contributing content to Lucky‘s website and the print edition. Lucky will also share online advertising revenue with the bloggers on a 50/50 split – fairly standard terms for online ad networks.

Considering that network participation offers both exposure and financial benefits, it’s not surprising that the 50 Lucky Style Collective bloggers are generally more influential than those in Vogue’s network. Mrs. O, the blog that tracks Michelle Obama’s style, and Honestly…WTF are both ranked among the top 99 most influential fashion blogs, and many of the others have immediately visible signs of engaged audiences either directly on their blogs or social networks like Twitter and Facebook.

In our look at how fashion magazines would stack up against fashion blogs online, we noted that recently appointed Lucky editor-in-chief Brandon Holley’s online experience (she formerly led Shine, Yahoo’s US women’s site) would likely make a difference in increasing the magazine’s online influence.

As Lucky joins influential print and web publishers like Glamour and Elle in offering blogger opportunities that extend beyond simple association, it looks like that was more than a lucky guess.

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.

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.

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

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.

Fashion magazines: not dead yet

Fashion blogs are undoubtedly part of fashion’s future, and give a platform to everyone from the intelligent young teen to the photographer who sees editorial opportunities on the street. Without worries about publishing costs, newsstand placement, licensing costs and salaries, blogs in every category are leaner operations than magazines. Blogs don’t have legacy costs, but they’re nowhere near print magazines in terms of revenue either.

When it comes to numbers, few individual editors or writers can compete with the most popular bloggers. Mario Testino may be more established, but in terms of sheer numbers, Scott Schuman reaches more people looking for style inspiration on a daily basis. Though they’ve captured respectable fashion audiences, bloggers have yet to capture the advertisers.

Allure, one of the few fashion magazines to show a year over year decline in revenue and ad pages, still sold more than $33 million of advertising in the 3rd quarter. People Style Watch, a relatively new title that focuses on celebrity fashion, brought in $15 million. That’s one quarter, or 3 months. Granted that the 3rd quarter includes September, when fashion magazines often receive the most ads; still, it would be difficult to find a single fashion blog that brings in $15 million in advertising in one year, probably even two or three.

Part of the allure of many fashion blogs is an alternative point of view that’s not tied to how many ad pages a company controls. In an industry where legitimate criticism can result in revoked show invitations and snubs, the outside status of bloggers is seen as more trustworthy. So much so, that the FTC created specific regulations for bloggers that don’t apply to the people who write for print publications. Especially in fashion, where there’s rarely a hard hitting look at business practices and it’s commonplace for editorials to feature many of the same products that appear in paid ads, it may also be what keeps fashion blogs from ever becoming big business.

In fairness, it’s not only bloggers. Style.com, owned by Vogue publisher Conde Nast, is well established and well regarded. For years, it was backed by both Vogue and W magazine, yet even that hasn’t been enough to draw the kind of revenue that the print publications command. Vogue claims a readership of 1.2 million, while Style.com claims 2.3 million. Yet a 1-page color ad has an estimated CPM (cost per thousand) of $125 while the last media kit to include rates has Style.com commanding a $30 CPM – which is actually fairly high for online display advertising. Vogue increased both ad pages and revenue by more than 30% in the 3rd quarter. The raw numbers? $109 million in revenue in 3 months, and over $255 million from January through September. There’s no single fashion site online – including Style.com -  that even comes close.

3rd Quarter Fashion & Women’s Magazine Revenue

Back in July when the names for the products in the Rodarte line were released, Jessica Wakeman posted an angry rant on the Frisky saying the designations were inappropriate, which sparked discussion around the Internet. M.A.C. and Rodarte responded with an apology and promise to donate proceeds from the line to victims of violence and poverty in Juarez, Mexico. They also elected to change the names for their makeup products, but now M.A.C. has announced via Facebook page statement that the collection will not ship at all. {The Cut}

Why all the backtracking from such a highly anticipated collaboration?

The collection was inspired by Mexican culture after a trip through Texas taken by Rodarteâ€s two designers. The products were thus named with that inspiration in mind. “Quinceañera” was chosen for the name of a pink blush, while “Ghost Town” was selected as the name for a sheer white lipstick. However, it was the nail polish called “Juarez” that ticked off the Frisky, which blasted the brands for being tasteless. {The Cut} The blog post said:

“Whyâ€s it tasteless? Juarez is an impoverished Mexican factory town notorious for the number of women between the ages of 12 and 22 who have been raped and murdered with little or no response from police. Most of the young women are employees at the border townâ€s factories, called maquiladoras, and disappeared on the way to or from work. Activists have been applying constant pressure on Mexican police, who have shown little response to properly investigating the murders, allegedly because the victims are poor women. The crime channel TruTV even called Juarez a “serial killers†playground”! And itâ€s not like the Juarez murders are some big secret: Jennifer Lopez even starred in a film,“Bordertown,” playing a reporter who writes about the rapes and murders.”  {the Frisky}

The blog post prompted widespread Internet debate over the cosmetic names, in addition to many angry comments from the Friskyâ€s readers. Some were shocked, some were equally outraged by Rodarteâ€s nail polish name, some mocked the author for reading too much into a nail polish name and others alleged the bloggerâ€s research was incorrect. Whether you agree with the post or not, the fact that a blogger caused a cosmetics brand such as M.A.C. to put the brakes on an entire, much talked about collection goes to show just how influential the blogosphere can be.

The statement M.A.C. released Tuesday said the line was canceled “out of respect for the people of Mexico,” and they will still donate the projected profits from the line to legitimate organizations that work to support the women of Juarez. {Elle UK}

What do you think? Is M.A.C. doing the right thing by withholding the collection, or is this a case of overly PC Internet writers finding offense where none actually exists?

At the top of the list of gainers is Brazil’s Dia de Beaute, who jumped from 131st place in January to 75th in the current ranking. Beauty bloggers in general are moving up the ranks from the US (All Lacquered Up, BellaSugar, Makeup and Beauty Blog) to Spain (Arrebatadora).

Publishers who offer multi-topic coverage with fashion news, shopping and non-celebrity style also seem to be gaining ground. Everyone’s speculating about the future of Style.com now that Vogue has a site of its own, but their Style File blog has gained traction with readers, jumping from the 100th position to a comfortable ranking of 60th, well inside the top 99 of the current rankings.

Then there are the celebrity bloggers. Tavi’s Style Rookie, the eponymous Bryan Boy and Catherine Kallon’s Red Carpet Fashion Awards have appeared in print almost as frequently as the designers and labels they blog about. While the publicity surely hasn’t hurt, let’s give credit where it’s due: our rankings aren’t just measuring traffic, but the ways people engage after they’ve been to the site. It’s not just an influx of visitors, but an influx of people who enjoy what they see enough to share it and come back.

Then there are the men. If you thought women loved shoes, you haven’t been paying attention to the men’s fashion bloggers who have pages of posts profiling the latest sneakers down to the detail. You’ll also find style enthusiast obsessing over the most interesting watches and accessories, as well as what clothing is hitting the racks. While they may not be the first sites that come to mind when you hear the words “fashion blog,” the guys are no slouches in the influential style category.

“I have no where near 4 million readers.” – Tavi Gevinson

Despite a straightforward statement to the contrary, wildly inflated numbers about fashion blogs and websites abound. Sometimes the numbers come from the bloggers and websites themselves – with no verification, other times they’re seemingly pulled from thin air.

Let’s make something clear from the start: we firmly believe that traffic numbers aren’t the only measure of success, or even the best measure. It’s why we rank blogs by influence, and why a high traffic blog like Coco Perez doesn’t overtake a lower traffic blog with a more engaged audience in our ranking. We are of the belief that the best blogs or sites are not necessarily those with the highest number of uniques or pageviews.

We also know that traffic measurement sites, directly installed ones like Quantcast included, can miss visitors.  Even programs like Google Analytics don’t always record every visit. Panel based measurement services like Hitwise and ComScore can be entirely inaccurate for smaller sites with less than 1 million visitors per month.

That said, writers and publishers are inflating numbers for fashion blogs and websites at a scale that would put Bear Sterns to shame.

Take, for example, Dirrty Glam. In a recent writeup on Fashionista, the site claimed 1 million users per month. In comments on the story we raised doubts about this number. Lauren Sherman, editor, explained “I actually had our writer double check that it wasn’t pageviews because it would make a heck of a lot more sense. But they insist it’s uniques.”

We’re going to insist that Dirrty Glam lied about their traffic when speaking to Fashionista, or defines a unique visitor as something completely different than the rest of the web. While traffic estimates are rarely 100% accurate, it’s nearly impossible that a site with 1 million unique visitors per month would be ignored by all of them. Yet Quantcast has no data to show, Alexa puts their overall traffic rank below the top 1 million sites on the web, and Google Ad Planner has no information on the site.

Update (05/03/10): Dirrty Glam editor Alie Suvélor contacted us with a copy of Dirrty Glam’s press kit which lists stats at 1,000,000 hits per month (which is plausible), not 1,000,000 visitors. The Fashionista interview was translated from French to English, and Suvélor says the correct measurement was lost in translation, not intentionally stretched.

The next imaginary traffic number comes from StyleSpot, a Los Angeles based celebrity style site launched last year – and it’s a whopper. The primary source of a recent Wall Street Journal article on which celebrities influence consumer behavior, the site claims to have approximately 10 million unique visitors per month. We aren’t saying they’re lying – okay, we are. We could link to Quantcast and Alexa, but we’ll summarize here: Style.com, Conde Nast’s nearly 10-year-old, well promoted, well established, very well linked fashion site, receives around 1.8 million unique visitors per month according to Google Ad Planner. Yes, StyleSpot claims to have nearly 10 times the audience of Style.com.

Really? That has to be a misprint – perhaps they meant 10 thousand. No?

We contacted StyleSpot and Christina Brinkley, the author of the Wall Street Journal article, for comment but haven’t heard back.

Is Sandra Bullock really the most likely celebrity salesperson for fashion?

At best, the falsified traffic numbers claimed by publishers makes them look ignorant, and completely dishonest at worst. At best, journalists have not made any attempt to fact check information from publishers, and are okay with using obviously false information so long as it supports their story at worst. This isn’t quoting traffic figures from a month where there was a spike in traffic, or massaging data to put the best statistics forward, these are out and out lies.

The Wall Street Journal story, while an interesting subject regardless of numbers, likely relied on StyleSpot’s purported large sample size to report a trend. If you have 100,000 total clicks, and 15,000 people click to visit a retailer based on Sandra Bullock’s red carpet look, versus 100 for Carey Mulligan, it’s a well founded observation to make that Bullock is more influential commercially. If the sample size is smaller, and the comparison is 20 clicks on Bullock’s outfit to 7 on Mulligan’s, it automatically becomes something which may be of interest for the publisher, but not a significant pattern where conclusions about a wider audience could be drawn.

Truth in Advertising: Fashion Site Audiences by the (Real) Numbers

Dirrty Glam

Reported: 1 million users per month, in 15 countries

Google Ad Planner says: no data available for any country, including France

Reality: The true monthly unique visitor count is nowhere near 1 million, or even a tenth of that. A site with 1 million users would not be completely off the radar of every traffic measurement site.

StyleSpot

Reported: 1o million users per month

Google Ad Planner says: no data available for any country

Reality: Ha. Not one tenth of one percent of what’s claimed. StyleSpot’s PR person deserves a raise.

Style Rookie

Reported: 4 million, prominently debunked by Tavi herself

Google Ad Planner says: 180,000 estimated uniques (cookie based) worldwide

Reality: With the constant stream of media attention, partnerships and press, Tavi’s audience could be as high as 200,000 visitors/month or more – there is sometimes a lag in reporting for Google Ad Planner. Not 4 million, but nothing to scoff at, and a significant audience for any independent publisher.

Style.com

Reported: 688,819 users per month

Google Ad Planner says: 520,000 uniques per month… in the US alone. 1.8 million total worldwide

Reality: The total US audience may have decreased since the re-launch of Vogue.com as a completely separate site, but the worldwide audience is likely far greater than reported.

Elle.com

Reported: 1,431,000 unique visitors per month

Google Ad Planner says: 1.1 million unique visitors in the US alone, 1.8 million total worldwide

Reality: Quantcast, which measures visitors directly on this site, reports 1.4 million US people visiting per month, and a total of 1.9 million including international visitors

Vogue.fr

Reported: 296,000 unique users per month

Google Ad Planner says: 170,000 users in France alone, 220,000 total worldwide

Reality: The reported figure was taken from September data, which is a month where many fashion sites see their highest levels of traffic (likely due to Fashion Week coverage). Though the figures aren’t an exact match, the Google Ad Panner figures may be on the low end of estimates, but are accurate enough that they wouldn’t miss millions or hundreds of thousands of visitors to a site.

Google Ad Planner, while not 100% accurate, has one of the most comprehensive databases around. Consider that they have access not only to publishers in the AdSense network, Analytics users and search engine users in multiple countries, but through their acquisition of DoubleClick, one of the largest international advertising tracking systems around. We decided to run a few sites through to verify publisher audience claims.

Worth noting, sites less than one year old without more than 100,000 visitors per month (including Signature9) may not appear, even if they use any of the aforementioned Google products. Dirrty Glam, the site which claims to have 1 million users per month, is 2-3 years old based on claims of being founded in 2007.