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.

We just explored how fashion magazines are faring online against fashion blogs (they’re not failing, but the bloggers are doing pretty well on their own). Unsurprisingly, the magazines who are doing it (engaging an audience, that is) as well as bloggers are the ones who’ve been active in bringing bloggers into the fold through partnerships or special site sections.

So when we heard about Vogue‘s 1000-strong “Influencer” network, we thought it was a smart move. Then we read more and wondered if we’d overlooked the benefit to the participating bloggers.

Here’s AdWeek’s summary:

“The Influencer Network is a panel of some 1,000 women deemed to have sway over other women, based on how active they are on social networks like Facebook and Polyvore, a fashion site where people create collages of outfits and share them with other members.

“There are a lot of people who are self-appointed experts,” says Susan Plagemann, vp, publisher of Vogue. “The biggest difference is, weâ€re developing a program of ambassadors who spread the word digitally across a very big network about the access thatâ€s been given because of Vogue.”

Panel members, who arenâ€t compensated, are asked to provide feedback for clients on anything from new products, upcoming fashion collections, and ad creative. Theyâ€re encouraged to talk about the products on their social networks, raising awareness of the products and Vogue itself.” {AdWeek}

Emphasis ours.

So let’s get this straight: bloggers and others who’ve proven* themselves to be influential in building followings on different social media platforms provide free market panel feedback (usually part of qualitative market research, usually paid for) to companies who have enough money to pay Vogue for a $150,000+ ad (the average cost of a one page, color advertisement in the print magazine). Vogue, a magazine that had over $100 million in revenue in one quarter last year, gets to add a premium to ads which cost $150,000+ per page by advising advertisers on how the products or ads will perform online and pushing the products and ads through a network of people who will seed them to help ensure their success. And the bloggers and influencers get… shafted.

While this sounds like an amazing business model for Vogue and their advertisers, it doesn’t sound like anything remotely beneficial to the people participating as currently structured. Which brings us to the * behind the proven portion of the pitch.

Styleite notes that many of the influencers don’t actually seem to have much influence. We know that quantity isn’t everything in social media – an account with 1000 engaged followers/fans can perform as one with 10,000 passive users attached. Needless to say, on the web we’re firm believers that influence isn’t just about which fashion blog has the most traffic. That said, almost none of the bloggers featured have an Alexa ranking below 2 million, or enough traffic to register on any other traffic estimation site (Quantcast, Google AdPlanner, Compete), and one has a grand total of 11 links from other blogs and sites.

We’re not going to call any out by name, because many of the blogs are fairly new so it’s understandable that their traffic, links, social media activity and other signs of influence would be low. There’s no shame in that at all, but it is a stretch to call them influencers at this point. This sounds more like a qualified consumer panel, but the difference is that consumer panels normally get something these ladies don’t: payment for their participation. It’s not anything to retire off of (typically $20-$100 depending on the time involved), but it’s something that reflects the fact that consumer feedback to the type of companies who can pay $150,000 for an ad can afford to pay people for giving them feedback that will help them increase brand awareness and sales. Helping to spread their commercial, promotional messages has a value as well.

You know who is influential in fashion? The Sartorialist. He may rub some people the wrong way with his description of “sturdy” legs and indifference towards personal bloggers, but even there it takes off on social media and causes controversy because he has online influence that’s backed up by the number of people linking to, following and sharing his content. There are 98 other fashion blogs here who are influencing people, and we’re pretty sure that most aren’t in Vogue‘s network.

And though we haven’t asked him, do you know what someone like the Sartorialist would probably say if someone asked him to be an ambassador for a commercial brand with a (minimum) 6-figure ad budget by providing feedback to said brand on ways to improve their $150,000 ad and tell people about it online for free? No.

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.

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.

Fashion blogs are increasing in influence, with many of the larger ones becoming proper media businesses. While the audience for fashion content has been online for some time, the advertisers who support fashion publishing have been slower to follow. With very few exceptions, even brands who have begun to embrace the internet as a medium for fashion don’t put the same ad dollars behind online publishers that they do for print publishers.

Refinery29, a multi-author professional fashion blog, disclosed revenue numbers that indicate the online advertising trend may be headed in the right direction for fashion blogs. In an interview with TechCrunch, CEO Philippe von Borries predicts that the site will do $8 million in revenue this year, based on first quarter earnings. That’s up from $2 million in revenue in 2010, and $600,000 in revenue in 2009. The only attributed round of funding is a $500,000 seed round in February 2010, so there’s no definitive valuation for the company as a whole; but when when AOL acquired the TechCrunch network in September 2010 they paid between $25 and $40 million for the blogs which reported annual revenues of $10 million. {Inc.} Using the same multiplier (2.5-4x revenue), if Refinery29 achieves their $8 million sales goals the site could be worth $20-32 million.

Launched in 2005 as “the preeminent guide to New York City’s truly great shops,” the site has broadened its editorial to include local sections that cover fashion in Los Angeles, Chicago, and most recently San Francisco. Part of what makes the Refinery29 sales numbers – and potential valuation – particularly notable is that they’re one of the few sites not backed by a major publisher to focus primarily on fashion. The Sugar Network has a much higher valuation, and while their FabSugar fashion blog is one of the top 20 most influential fashion blogs, the company’s valuation is spread across multiple sites with the celebrity driven PopSugar blog and shopping search engine ShopStyle driving the largest amounts of traffic and revenue respectively.

Refinery29 stepped into the local group deal/sample sale arena with Refinery29 Reserve last November, but von Borries estimates that the commerce portion of the site will only represent 25% of revenue. For a 5-month old offering which is only available in New York, $2 million (25% of $8 million) in projected sales isn’t anything to sniff at, and with the exception of the Huffington Post, most blogs that find themselves with multi-million dollar valuations get there through diversified income sources like events or tech offerings.

However, the bigger news is that the company has been able to build ad revenue to a point that brings the site on par with tech blogs – a segment of online publishing that hasn’t had to sell advertisers on online content in the same way fashion has. Additionally, the  revenue is from a much smaller audience base: Refinery29’s internal numbers put site traffic at 1.6 million unique visitors per month (Google AdPlanner puts the number at 620,000 for March), TechCrunch reportedly reaches 9.2 million per month (Google AdPlanner estimates 8.39 million across the various sites in the network for March).

This is one fashion trend we’ve been waiting on for some time.

Yesterday we were taking a look at tweets when Style Blog Fuck Up popped up on our radar. First on Tumblr, the blogging service that’s put a good deal of effort into nurturing it’s fashion community, it’s since moved to WordPress.com.

It seems that Tumblr has proactively closed the account, and there are some questions of copyright infringement facing the unnamed UK person behind the blog.

In the UK and the US, sometimes usage of a photo – even one marked all rights reserved – is allowed to be reproduced for discussion, criticism or news value. This doesn’t mean news agencies can grab any photo they want and say “news! We can do what we’d like here”, but an article which discusses a controversial image can include that image in the discussion.

For example, Ralph Lauren’s attempts to have images of it’s now infamous Photoshop disaster ad pulled on grounds of copyright infringement fell flat because much of the discussion was surrounding just how terrible the retouching in the photo was (it gave an already slim model alien-like proportions, skinnier than those of a concentration camp starvation victim).

While SBFU has the right to use the images in commentary, Tumblr also has a right not to host the content or the blog. It ultimately goes to the larger question of whether style bloggers can expect to become public figures of some sort, and maintain total control of their images. In the case of derivative illustrations of style bloggers being used on commercial products (sans blogger notification or permission), we noted that while the illustrations were probably legal, it really just rubs people the wrong way to see their image on a product they have nothing to do with. Inditex eventually pulled the shirts.

That said, here’s our take. The discussion of the style blogger outfits and some use of images is probably permitted, but SBFU is just mean for the sake of being mean, banal and totally lacking in terms of any comedic value.

On Tavi: “people are lining up to tounge fuck her arse. I guess being a try hard gets you somewhere.”

On Carrie from Wish Wish Wish: “This girl has probably the most popular style blogs in the UK. Only god knows why. Shes a quintessential upper middle class girl born with a silver spoon in her arse. Add this girl to the “made with paint” category, cross referenced with cunt.”

Then there was the “smile” at an American blogger who has since removed her blog on “Fashion for the Economically Challenged.”

Look, we enjoy a laugh at people who take fashion a bit too seriously as much as anyone. Man Repeller? Hilarious, we await the next roundup of things that look like vaginas. The Fug Girls? Brilliant. Regretsy? Love it. Michael K‘s continued descriptions of Karl Lagerfeld as a fashion zombie (we have to quote this)?

“Lily Allen, Florence Welch, Clemence Poesy,and Emma Roberts. They crawled through the tundra for miles to get a picture with the exquisite demon whose mop of bone dust threads holds the broken dreams of 12-year-old models in its tips.” {Dlisted}

Or his description of John Galliano as “the secret love child of Boris and Natasha Fatale” and Captain Hook? We wish he’d write about fashion more often, because it’s pure comedy.

“You’re a stuck up cunt with money” and “haha, you don’t have money and your attempt at style makes me smile, silly American”? More of a sophomoric personal attack from a small mind that doesn’t contain any of the wit, style or education that makes the aforementioned blogs worth reading. SBFU’s own f*ck up isn’t necessarily critiquing style bloggers (which is more likely to happen the more popular they become), but completely failing at finding a style of its own.