Philly Style Blogger Profile: Ian Michael Crumm

Ian Michael Crumm is a Philly-based style blogger at ianmichaelcrumm.com. I've run into him a lot in the last couple of months, at events and around campus. We run in similar blogger circles, both now produce content for Racked Philly, and both may have a little something brewing with a certain New York-based department store. More on that later. In these shots, Ian's wearing a shirt that was a gift from his uncle, linen shorts from Banana Republic, Nike mirror lens sunglasses, a couple of sterling silver bracelets and rings, and navy leather Tommy Bahama shoes with striped socks.

Ian describes his style as "eclectic, colorful, and a little quirky." "I can be refined if I want to," he says, "but there's normally something a little off, a little bright, a little not traditionally supposed to be there." 

His musical taste is pretty Top-40. "I always make statements that I wish I was more musically eclectic," he says, "but I tend to lean [towards] something I can dance to, simple lyrics that are, you know, just fun to bop around to. I'm a big dancer."

Ian started blogging about three and a half years back under a few different blog names. They were fashion blogs, discussing trends in the industry, local events, and looks he likes, but they were largely not based around original content. He curated images, gave his opinion. But he was left wanting "to do something more meaningful." So he started his new eponymous blog (ianmichaelcrumm.com) a year or so back. It's "more about what [he] wear[s]." It fits into the vein of the classic personal style blog: daily outfit posts, artfully posed photos. "I think I’ve just always been a computer person," he told me, "always been on Facebook, and, you know, just all the social networks—an early adopter. And through friends and family and people always complementing what I wore, and just having a general interest in fashion it seemed like a cool fit to start a blog." The blog also complements other fashion projects he's involved in. "I’ve produced some fashion shows before, and [I] do photo-shoot styling and some modeling here and there. So it was just kind of a natural fit." Plus it presents a complete narrative with his major: Communications, with an emphasis on PR and marketing.Blogs like his have become something like an online portfolio.

Ian's blog is a hybrid of the scripted and the spontaneous. Some posts are planned out carefully in advance, like a fashion magazine editorial spread, others simply not. Ian's working on making a larger portion of his content structured and scheduled, "branding" certain days, having a more defined calendar. It makes his blog appear more professional and gives his readers a sense of when they can expect certain kinds of content. Like all bloggers, Ian continually has to think about how to grow his audience, attract new sponsors, and create new opportunities. He feels like he's beginning to get the hang of it, but it's an ongoing process. His blog, like most fashion blogs, is largely image-based, with a few apt descriptions here and there. Images, he says, "make it easy to quickly click, look, enjoy, [and] move on." Who's got time to sit down and read the thousands of high-quality fashion blogs out there today? Better to tumble down a streaming cascade of images."If it's really long," Ian admits of other people's blogs, "I'm gonna skip it." He designs his blog with his own blog-consuming habits in mind.

Over the last few years of blogging, Ian has seen the fashion blogosphere change in some significant ways, first expanding, then contracting. The field is crowded with new players. More and more people see their blogs as entryways into a profession. The line between personal blog and marketing device gets blurrier and blurrier. The change is particularly acute, notes Ian, at New York Fashion Week, which he attends each season. "Even going back six years or so [it was different]." Bloggers, back then, "were the new thing." Not so much anymore. "There are more restrictions for getting into fashion shows." This past season "Mercedes Benz kind of like put the cut on bloggers," reducing their invitations by fifteen percent. "The feel at Lincoln Center," says Ian, "was very interesting last season." There were "multiple lines of security to get into the shows." The mood shifted "from no access to insane access to..." whatever it is we have now. These days "everyone has a blog." "A lot of businesses have blogs, and people have their personal blogs, and then they have more industry specific blogs, and because everyone has blogs now, there's these checks and balances that I feel are being put into place." But at the same time, for the "people who are very very serious," "there are really cool opportunities." Bloggers like Ian are transitioning into more and more of a marketing function, doing collaborations with brands, pursuing professional opportunities. But to do so, they increasingly have to "raise the bar." In this new, crowded fashion blogosphere, only the fittest, savviest bloggers survive. As for Ian, he's recently done collaborations ("collabs") with Kimpton Hotels and Hotel Palomar, putting together a shopping guide for them. He's now prepping for New York Fashion Week.

It's a challenge to cover New York Fashion Week these days. Everyone's doing it. Readers are getting bored of it. You have to find a new angle, a new approach. You have to be aware of what your competition is covering. "I'm always trawling Twitter, Instagram, sometimes searching[ing] different hashtags." Ian spends more time than he's comfortable admitting seeing what other people are tweeting and talking about. Social media is an absolute necessity for a blogger. It's how you build your network. It's how you stay current. It's also something of an addiction. Ian has no real way to estimate how much time a day he spends on social media. He checks Twitter and Instagram first thing in the morning, and before he goes to bed, and even, occasionally, in the middle of the night when he cant' sleep. Social media is global now. "So someone somewhere is posting."

Ian doesn't think we've seen the end of the fashion blog gold rush, though he thinks it's most likely "nearing its peak." Bloggers are beginning to think of what they do differently, even cast off the blogger label. Long-time fashion bloggers like Bryanboy are now re-branding themselves as "Internet entertainers," presenting their content and commentary across media platforms. And as they do so, the blog itself is becoming less important. It's a blogger's brand that matters now, not their blog per se. They have to learn how to leverage it across social media. They have to learn how to collaborate beyond the boundaries of their blog. Ian is committed to exploring this new "free form" frontier.