Samantha Chu of A Glimpse of Glamour is very outgoing and friendly and full of interesting observations on the world of blogging. After going over the transcript of our interview, I realized that while I had meant to ask her about her blog specifically, we ended up discussing the nature of personal blogs in general, and their limitations. That’s not too surprising a turn for someone who spends a great deal of her free time reading and considering big ideas. So while I did get a few snippets about her personal style, (“My dress is vintage. I watch all of these old movies, and I’m like “Why don’t I live in that time period,” I hate jeans. I HATE them. When I look at myself in jeans, I’m like ‘you look average, get them off.’”) below are her thoughts on the state of fashion blogs in general:

“I want to have a blog, but sometimes it’s hard when you start comparing yourself to everybody else, and what everybody else has. Before, I used to wish that I had all those things the other person had in order to make my life better. But then I started working at Louis Vuitton part-time, so now I work everyday so now I look at other blogs and I’m like “Look at their free time! Look at their coffee! They’re just sitting around with their cat. That’s the kind of life that I want!” So it’s funny now, I’m jealous of people’s free weekends instead of their clothes.”

“Sometimes it’s hard because you put yourself out there and if you don’t get the response you want to. I’ve been reading so many books, I just read the Eckhart Tolle book A New Earth and it’s all about ego, and I’m sure that everyone who writes a blog and puts themselves out there has a bit of ego, how many followers you have, how many comments you have, who is actually reading it? Then you start looking at other people’s blogs and you start thinking I’m never going to attain what these people are attaining, I’m never going to get those free clothes.”

“I read The Beauty Myth, which is about how magazines create this idea of beauty that all women strive to attain. And now I feel like it’s the same in blogs."

"I see the same kind of look everywhere, tight pants and big shirts, and boots, and I go out into the stores and that’s all I see right now, and my body doesn’t look well in those clothes. I hate separates, I like dresses all the time. I don’t look well in pants. And I’m like, just buy the pants, then I’m like, “Oh my god, I’m trying live up to what these bloggers look like.” Everywhere I look it’s long, bedraggled ombre hair. And everybody is holding their coffee and looking relaxed. It’s funny. What is beautiful? Is it just everything you see all the time, everybody wearing the same thing?” 

“With blogs, and pinterest, you can scroll through it and see the same thing over and over again. Everybody wants to be French. Everybody wants to monogram everything, they’re all obsessed with chinoiserie, which bothers me because I’m Chinese – this is just a rant – and everyone wants to be French. It’s always the same type of beauty. Everybody wants to be the same person, everybody wants to be Alexa Chung; everybody wants to be Kate Moss. People like to reblog the same pictures over and over again. How can you have a favorite song when the same five songs are being played on the radio? It’s like that. Where is it going now, what next? Are we just going to be taking pictures of ourselves forever?”

What do you think? Is Samantha right? Do blogs enforce the same kind of monolithic idea of beauty, or is there more diversity? What do you think is the future of personal style blogs?