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.

2009 saw Schuman’s first book release, along with a well received collaboration with Burberry on a site with images centered around the British label’s wardrobe staple – the trench coat. The site sustained the initial interest via user uploads and social media tools like Facebook. Most interesting however is that the out the door lines at book signings, the renewed interest in a piece of clothing that has had the same design for decades, are all tangible demonstrations of the impact fashion bloggers can have.

The first Style99 ranked over 250 blogs to determine the most influential among them. This quarter, we increased the number of included blogs to more than 400 with an emphasis on uncovering more non-English language blogs that were having an impact with readers. There are great lists of favorite blogs out there, and lots of metrics, but nothing that made the numbers tell a story.

The rankings methodology has changed slightly, but among the publishers at the very top of the list, not much else has. The first rankings – released in September 2009, included data from blog aggregator Technorati. To give a more balanced ranking that took into account blogs not registered with the service, particularly blogs not in English, the Technorati score has been replaced with one for unique domain links. While large budgets and networks can increase the number of overall links to a site, and conversely the perceived popularity, the number of unique individual sites generally gives a more accurate picture. The rest? Well, that’s still pretty similar: the rankings are heavily weighted towards demonstrated preferences by readers and other bloggers in that order. A large marketing budget may buy traffic, but it doesn’t by influence.

Consider Schuman’s the Sartorialist, which maintains the top spot despite the adjustment in ranking criteria. While unique visitors to the blog certainly aren’t lacking, network behemoths have more traffic, possibly more pageviews and would outperform on standard online media measurements. Among the people who visit the site though, more have bookmarked, blogged and linked to the Sartorialist’s posts than any other blog we came across.  Let it be a message that when it comes to actionable influence, the quality of reader interest matters just as much as the quantity.

Among the top 10% of bloggers ranked, network multi-author blogs (think Breaking Media’s Fashionista, Aol’s StyleList, New York Magazine’s the Cut, Sugar Inc.’s Fabsugar) do appear, but overwhelmingly fashion influence online belongs to publishers with a distinctly individual point of view. Street style bloggers who use everyday settings as their editorial backdrops, girls who share their personal style, guys who share a passion for the latest sneaker release; the list goes on, but the common thread is that the unabashed fashion and beauty fanatics are connecting with readers online in ways that most traditional media companies haven’t been able to.

99 Most Influential Style Blogs – January 2010 {Signature9}