WhoWhatWearDaily Review

After completing the assigned readings for today’s class, I almost felt compelled by sheer embarrassment to randomly pick some historian’s blog and comment for this assignment. I know nothing about blogging. To be completely honest, until the readings, I was not even sure what a blog was. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my morning addiction could easily work for this assignment instead. Even though I have been frequenting the style blog, WhoWhatWearDaily.com, for several months, prior to last week’s class, I was so technologically oblivious that I did not even realize it was a blog. Reading WhoWhatWearDaily, or WWWD, is a guilty pleasure I acknowledge to few people. After all, I am a new graduate student in history and will soon be a commissioned officer in the United States Navy. The fact that I read fashion blogs never emerges in a casual conversation; simply put, I am too embarrassed to admit it. With the guilty conscience of an academic, I should likely be perusing something much more scholarly and mature when I surf the internet. However, since I have discovered WWWD is actually a blog, I now freely admit that, in addition to The Economist and Early Bird, I anxiously read WhoWhatWearDaily every morning.

WhoWhatWearDaily is a daily blog edited by Katherine Power and Hillary Kerr, both former fashion editors. The blog’s purpose is to provide background information on celebrity fashion to a fashion-forward audience who does not necessarily want to simply copy celebrity lifestyles. It does not comment on their stints in rehab, their arrests, or their social calendars but instead researches what the celebrities wore at those aforementioned occasions. It offers style tips and trends without sleaze. The postings are well-written and witty, a reason I am addicted to the site. Usual topics include how to wear new trends, what a certain celebrity was wearing, or what she might wear. Each daily posting is complete with detailed pictures of the featured celebrity, event, or trend, with informative captions breaking down the outfit. A weekly video posting has been added to provide the reader another media alternative.

Easy to navigate, the blog does not focus on filtering; the only links are to the store/brand websites for the mentioned clothing or the location of a cheaper alternative, a plus for the budget-conscious reader. I find this to be a better expression of the editors’ originality and effort into researching their subject matter. The blog does not simply post links to other sites on a similar topic, a method I find distracting and uninspired. The posts do allow reader commentary and the editors actually take the comments into consideration for the readers’ queries often become the topics of future posts. Very user-friendly, the blog also allows for the direct submission of questions and comments about what a particular celebrity was wearing. Smart and insightful, WhoWhatWearDaily encourages return readers like myself with its reader-friendly format while thankfully avoiding the gossipy nature of other celebrity blogs. Perhaps I should no longer feel guilty.