The Fashionista's Designer by Gabby Panacek
July 22, 2008
RUE D'ANTIBES - Over the past year, Milla Michinaga has become one of Second Life's most prolific bloggers. Her popular MichaMi Style Blog, prior to her recent hiatus, was considered required daily reading for many SL fashionistas. Michinaga displayed her knowledge of SL fashion by mixing and matching individual pieces from both well-known and new or lesser-known designers.
Lately, though, Michinaga has shifted her focus from blogging to designing her own line of clothing. SLNN had the opportunity, recently, to sit down with her and talk about her love of blogging and her change in SL careers.
Reminiscing about the beginnings of her blog, which was created in May 2007, Michinaga says that her goals were pretty simple. "Well, my initial intentions were pretty simple," she said, "photograph (archive) and write up whatever I decided to wear that day. Up until then, I used to get all glammed up to the nines for my partner, Trev, who, bless him, didn't really care for the finer details of my outfits."
She shared that the "Outfit of the Day" feature of two blogs she was reading at the time, Closet Crisis and SL Men, played a large role in influencing the creation and direction of her own blog.
In the beginning, Michinaga blogged predominantly for herself, but soon many SL residents were referring to her blog for styling tips. This, of course, pleased her very much, but as she explains, "It also meant I had to keep the "consumer" in mind whenever I blogged something. So, although I was not doing reviews, I was conscious of each and every item I featured; was it good enough quality, was the price right, was it still available?, etc."
But it was the blog readers who provided the motivation to continue on. "The absolutely most unexpected and most gratifying aspect of blogging was the fantastic response from the SL community - I got such an overwhelming positive response through comments, IMs and e-mails that it just spurred me on for the longest of times.
;)
