Confessions of a 00s Influencer

A few more closing thoughts about life in my post-influencer era.

Sundaze Book Café is the home of everyday magic, joyful living and conversations likely to be had over a hot drink with a friend in your favourite café, capturing the syrup-slow feel and glow of a Sunday. I’m Michelle, and I’ll be your host this Sunday.

Ever since I was a kid watched 13 Going On 30, I’ve wanted to be a writer. First, it was an author, then it was a newspaper editor, then it was a fashion journalist¹. I was 18 when I decided to open a Blogger account and start a ‘Blogspot’ website.

Before that, I’d been reading Susie Lau’s website, stylebubble, enthralled at finding a British-Chinese woman that shared my adoration of fashion and who was busy showing up for herself by capturing her personal style online, and writing miniature stories about her days to accompany them. Susie, and stylebubble, was, you see, one of very few pieces of representation for me in 2007 or 2008. I also read fashiontoast and Bryanboy and Sea of Shoes, and felt simply mesmerised by these people who were curating online fashion magazines in their own way.

So, I Googled ‘how to start a blog’ and I did it.

I’ve briefly spoken about my blogging and influencing years, so I won’t do it again here, but I look back at those years in awe and admiration of my younger self. While the current iteration of me is relaxed, quietly self-assured and confident, the me back then was effervescent, gutsy and oh so determined to make it work. And I did.

After a few months, Daisybutter effectively became my job while I was at university and it paid my way through two and a half years of my degree – a lifeline since I was left with -£468 to live off after my accommodation and course fees came out of my student finance. After uni, it drummed up a five-figure income for me and provided me with at least four or five brand events, launches and parties per week, after my brand-new graduate job. I was made of different stuff, that’s for sure, because current me cannot fathom going to ONE event after work, never mind the three-per-night that I averaged close to London Fashion Week.

Just three years into ‘having a blog’, I’d come to a crossroads where I could no longer feasibly work on Daisybutter as much as I had at uni. My day job demanded more of me. So, I had to choose between a secure day job or an unstable blogging career that earned me more than my 9-5. By now, I’m sure you’ll have guessed that I chose to pursue my career in copywriting and content editing.

Influencing gets a bad rep these days. I suppose it’s for good reason: we’re in an era of wild overconsumption and, if I’m honest, the current iteration of influencing feels completely foreign to how it was when I was still active on the scene². But I still believe in my content creator friends and in the industry on the whole, I believe it started in good faith and that we can meander back to good influence.

I’m just not sure when.

And, while we wait, let me share some of the good, the bad, the funny and the strange of my experiences in the influencer world, circa 2009–2020.

• The thrill of receiving my first-ever seated ticket to a London Fashion Week show.

• Wearing randomly boujie outfits to work because I had a meeting with Harrods at 5.30pm, then a River Island event to go to at 7pm.

• Taking photos of absolutely everything: branded cupcakes, my breakfast, coffee, #fromwhereistand dress and shoes vignettes… Basically, we paved the way for 2025’s photo dumps and ‘candid moments’.

• Going to a Miss Selfridge press day (where you preview upcoming collections and make selects for samples you’d like to feature) and having the PR executive mistake me, a guest, for a waitress. She asked me to bring a (white) influencer water!

• Being chosen as an ambassador for Missguided, boohoo and Pandora. Clearly long before my move to slower fashion and educating myself about fast fashion.

• Getting to enjoy afternoon tea at The Ritz as a guest of Pandora!

• The disbelief that big household brands were inviting me to launch events, breakfast meetings and photoshoots.

• When innocent (yes, the smoothie people!) asked me to design a smoothie hat for their The Big Knit campaign!

• That time I got to be in Company magazine. RIP.

• Making it to the shortlist in the inaugural Cosmopolitan Blog and Twitter Awards for Best Established Fashion Blog. That was me!! (I didn’t win, but the award ceremony was a lot of fun.)

• And when my lecturers announced it and I could audibly hear coursemates whisper that I was ‘some sort of Z-list celeb?’, and that they’d never vote for me because it’d give me a leg up in the industry after we graduated. (We studied fashion journalism.)

• Proudly securing long-term partnerships with Papier, Dermalogica and Bloom & Wild.

• That dark time in 2010 when I’d return home from university lectures to a Formspring inbox full of anonymous hate, and people gleefully telling me they would no longer support my free-to-them content if I was being paid.

• On that note, securing my first-ever paid brand deal with eBay!

• When I designed a pizza for PizzaExpress to celebrate their Leggara series launch.

• All the MeatLiquor after-parties after busy London Fashion Week seasons.

• Receiving my British Fashion Council accreditation for a blog I began at university.

• Meeting some of my best friends through this strange ol’ world.

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1. I ended up studying fashion journalism at uni, and even completed several internships before graduating into a recession and watching nearly every fashion magazine cease printing and publication.

2. Oh god, I am old.