When did you start blogging?
I was 16, so it was about twelve years ago.
How did you get into it?
I lived in quite a small village and so I didn't really have a lot to do. We got the internet and I was a bit of a geek so I spent quite a lot of time online and looking around at things, and then I discovered blogging.
The idea of having a diary online appealed to me so I set one up. There wasn't really any forethought to it. As teenagers are, you want to talk about things and you want to communicate with people, and it just went from there really.
When did you start getting interested in journalism?
Well I was always interested in fashion. I decided when I was 12 that that was what I wanted to work in, but I was never great at art.
The writing side of it always seemed to be a better option for me, I was quite good at English at school. I always knew that was the world I wanted to work in, but it was probably when I was 16 or 17 that I really started seriously thinking about it, and started applying to university to do journalism.
I went to London College of Fashion and studied a degree in fashion journalism.
Is that when you started up Catwalk Queen?
Catwalk Queen was my personal blog. When I was about 18 and at university I converted it and made it more of a fashion website, because obviously the name was quite suitable for.
It was a progression really from what I was doing already. I think it was about 2001-2002 that I registered the URL.
How has that helped you to get to where you are today?
An element was literally being there early on in blogging and being at the right place and the right time.
There were no fashion blogs back then really, you could list them on one hand. I was very lucky to have that opportunity very early on.
But also I did a lot of stuff while I was studying, I tried to look for other websites I could write for and I tried to be involved in the online community, and I think that made a difference back then and it certainly makes a difference now as well.
It's all about being involved and getting yourself out there where you can.
What did you do after leaving Catwalk Queen?
I've work for a couple of start-ups, the first one was a celebrity website called thenod.com, then I moved on to latestinbeauty.com which is a beauty sample shop, and that was where I was until a couple of weeks ago.
Had you been in talks previously with Aigua Media about returning to Catwalk Queen?
No, we'd never really talked about it. I know some of the team and obviously a lot of my old colleagues are still here so I've been friends with the team for a long time, but I never really thought about returning.
It was in the back of my mind that it would be a great thing to do but I never knew whether the opportunity would be there until I spoke to them.
What advice would you give to someone who was interested in getting into fashion journalism?
First one, obviously, is to start a blog. If you don't have a blog then, well, just everybody needs to have a blog – it's as simple as that. If you want to be a writer you have to have an outlet to do that, and a blog is something that you can set up in two minutes now.
There's so many resources out there, so if you're not blogging or not on Twitter and you're not getting involved, then you can't be a good communicator. You have to be a good communicator to be a good journalist. That is my biggest thing.
Read – everything that you possibly can, not just fashion magazines. Read newspapers, read websites, read books, just to make sure you're reading all the time.
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