Last night, our Spinningfields store played host to an evening with Navaz Batliwalla and Manchester Fashion Network. Navaz spoke before a large crowd about her cult blog, Disneyrollergirl and her experiences in the London fashion industry. Before the event, we caught up with Navaz to ask her some questions of our own.
1. You were one of the first high-profile fashion bloggers in the UK. What made you decided to start your blog?
I was working on a great magazine and I was having a great time but it wasn’t really somewhere where you could really kind of express your personal opinion, because obviously that’s not what magazines are for. I was going to lots of events and press days and launches and seeing all of this amazing stuff and I wanted to put it all somewhere. I was freelancing for a website and pitched the ideas to them – why can’t we talk about what’s coming next and what people can expect to see next season, and they’d say ‘Oh, no-one wants to see that’.
I was aware of blogs and I was reading them so I thought: I’m just going to do it myself. I didn’t know if I was capable of technically maintaining a blog so it was a challenge for that reason as well. And that’s really why I started it. Also, it was a place to put the ideas that I had. I had so much information coming in all of the time; I was able to deposit it in one place. When you write a blog, you are the editor, the designer, the publisher, the IT person – everything!
2. What has been a personal highlight of your time blogging?
I’ve just come back from a trip to Paris with Hermes to see their leather workshop, which was quite incredible because they are one of my favourite brands. Top, luxury brands at that level don’t involve themselves with bloggers very much. They are starting to but it’s just the beginning, so to be invited on a trip like that was amazing. I also went to LA last year to watch a Lucozade commercial where they were roller-skating which was really nice as well. A lot of good work opportunities have come up through the blog. I’ve met a lot of people through both twitter and the blog.
3. If you could work with anyone in the industry, who would you choose?
I love Cos and I love Celine. They would be my top two brands to work with. It would be great to work with Celine, as they’re very distanced from social media. When they start to do it, it would be a privilege to work with them.
4. How important do you think fashion bloggers are to the industry right now? Do you think that their influence will become even more important moving forward?
I think that more and more brands are realising on so many levels how useful bloggers are to them- that two-way conversation. They get feedback from bloggers and bloggers help spread their messages. It’s a great marketing tool. Bloggers are great communicators and they kind of do the brands job for them. I think that in that sense, it can only continue.
5. What aspirations do you have for your blog, moving forwards?
I tend not to have goals in that sense. At the moment I am getting bombarded by a lot of information, which is the opposite of how I want the blog to be. I want to kind of step back from that a bit and narrow the focus more and really concentrate on what I like.
I do the blog but I also do styling and other creative projects. My background is styling but I’ve just not been doing it so much, as I’ve been doing so much writing. I want to bring back more styling and put some shoots on my blog, and that way possibly take it somewhere else. I want to do more hands-on creative stuff and showcase that on my blog as opposed to just writing.
At some point, I want to do some sort of video content. I do think that video is becoming increasingly important, as people like to see moving images and they like to see the person behind the blog. When my blog started, it was anonymous and now it’s not, but I still don’t really put photos of myself on there. I like to keep a bit of distance.
6. What are your must-have pieces for Spring/Summer 2012?
I’m actually thinking of Autumn/Winter now! I’m thinking of Celine coats – especially with the weather how it is!
For my Spring/Summer wish list, Cos have got a capsule collection of white shirts – I want to buy all of those! I also want to buy more colour. I love all the colour blocking that’s around at the moment – it’s really wearable, even though you wouldn’t think it. The way that I wear colour is with really minimalist shapes with maximalist colours – I love that combination!
Photographs by Luke Sampson