I started writing my first blog when I was about 16. I’m now 27, so I’ve been sharing my life and thoughts with the world in some shape or form for just over ten years.
I launched a fashion and beauty zine / blog called Catwalk Queen in 2002, on a domain I’d previously been using for my personal blog. The site gained popularity while I was a journalism student at The London College of Fashion, and when I graduated, I continued to work on it while freelancing for everyone from Norwich Union to Mr Kipling, and also flogging bath bombs for the fabulous folks at Lush.
In October 2004, I met the founders of Shiny Media, and joined them to help launch their first fashion-based blog, Shoewawa.com. It was a success, and in time we launched more blogs in the fashion and women’s areas. 2005 saw the relaunch of my site – Catwalk Queen – as a Shiny Media blog, with me at the helm. Over the next few years it continued to grow and develop.
While at Shiny, I learned a lot about the professional blogging industry, as well as online publishing and social media. As a hybrid blogger-journo, I was something new to many fashion and beauty PRs, and I spent a lot of time – like many of my contemporaries – working to open doors for bloggers. I toured PR agencies to talk about blogs and bloggers, I spoke at events like Graduate Fashion Week and I worked with some very famous brands on creative partnerships. In the past few years I’ve guest edited blogs for Topshop, Evans, Koodos and Yell and created video for Clinique and Estee Lauder. I’ve also been interviewed, profiled, mentioned or quoted by The Guardian Online, Vogue, The Observer, The Telegraph, The Independent, Grazia Australia, Cosmopolitan, ASOS Magazine, Happy Magazine, The Sun Online and The Evening Standard to name but a few.
After almost five years at Shiny Media, working my way up from a part-time freelancer to group editor of the entire fashion network, I made the tough decision in April 2009 to move on and take on some new challenges.
I spent the next 18 months as editor of The Nod, a website dedicated to the products and places that have been given ‘The Nod’ by celebrities. The site launched in July 2009 and was featured in Heat, The Mail on Sunday, The Sunday Express, Web User, The London Paper, The Daily Record, The Sun Online, The Daily Telegraph and AllAboutYou.com.
Between October 2010 and September 2011, I was Editor and Community Manager at Latest in Beauty, the try before you buy beauty website.
In September 2011, I joined Aigua Media as Editor in Chief, a role which reunited me not only with Catwalk Queen, but with many of the sites I worked with during my time at Shiny Media. Aigua acquired the fashion and beauty titles from Shiny in mid 2009, shortly after I moved on, and have taken them from strength to strength ever since.
I have also been working on a new shopping and fashion blog called Big Girls Browse, which is aimed at 12+ women, ladies with curves and anyone who finds it hard to shop to suit their shape. I have always been interested in mainstream fashion, high street shopping, dressing to suit your shape and so on, and with Big Girls Browse, I want to be able to bring that to a wider audience. I aim to show women how to make the best of themselves no matter their shape or size.
In my (limited) spare time, I continue to consult and guest blog for fashion brands, and also contribute to websites like Domestic Sluttery and Dorkadore.
