Philly Style Blogger Profile: Jacqueline Davis Moranti

Name: Jacqueline Davis Moranti
Blog: Burgundy Whispers
Hometown: Doesn't have one. Jacqui considers herself something of a nomad. Her family moved around a lot when she was a kid.
Age: 23
Day Job: Graphic Designer
What She's Listening to These Days: Flying Lotus, Prefuse 73, The Black Keys, Kaskade
How she Describes Her Style: Bohemian meets chic.
Style Influences: Kelly Framel, The Glamourai

Jacqui started her blog, Burgundy Whispers, when her friends suggested she keep a day to day journal of what she's wearing. Now she's hooked. "It's a way to communicate with the world that you couldn't do before," she says. It's also a great way to meet people with a similar interest in style.

Jacqui has a degree in fashion illustration from the University of the Arts. She sees her blog not just as a hobby, but as a way of leveling her fashion brand. She hopes it opens doors for her, not just in design, but in the fields of visual merchandising and fashion marketing.

Jacqui's dress is from Forever 21, a fact she let go with a detectable note of hesitation. 

The walls are in Northern Liberties, my old Philly stomping grounds. I miss it there. 

The shoes are by Steve Madden, though they are not at all the sort of thing I associate with him. Jacqui, and a lot of other style bloggers I've talked to, are connoisseurs of the sale, scouring the discount racks of name brand stores the way previous generations of urban stylites might have combed through the bins of thrift shops. There is an ideology of the perfect deal in the personal style blogosphere that sometimes borders on transgressive, as if discounts somehow bucked the fashion system as usual, as if one had pulled one over on the corporations. They have not. Discounts are what makes the system run smoothly in the first place. They get rid of unwanted inventory already marked needlessly high. But nonetheless, finding deals is a persistant game for the style blogger, one that sometimes provides the rush of subversion even when serving the interests of those towards whom the subversion is directed. I'm not saying this is how Jacqui sees it. But it's something I've noticed in the discourse of style blogs more generally.