The Queen Bee:
Name: Rachelle Hruska
Age: 26
Blog: GuestOfAGuest.com
Originally from: Nebraska
Now lives in: NoLIta
Background: Rachelle started Guest of a Guest two years ago as a side project while she worked in finance. “We don’t limit ourselves to any one given circle,” she says, which means that readership is huge — about 2 million page views a month — and coverage ranges from uptown balls to charity benefits hosted by bloggers. “Making community members the celebrities” and “positive energy” are her secrets.
Best post: Breaking the Keifer Sutherland headbutt story from the Met gala
Bonus points: BFF with Keith Lissner, who’s a contestant on Bravo’s “The Fashion Show”
Next up: This weekend she’s launching a sister site about the Hamptons, followed by a soon-to-come daily newsletter.
The Soloist:
Name: Mary Rambin
Age: 27
Blog: MoreThanMary.com
Originally From: Texas
Now lives in: Murray Hill
Background: She rose to fame as one-third of NonSociety, a “lifecasting” blog also featuring the musings of Julia Allison and Meghan Asha. She left last month and launched MoreThanMary, her own lifestyle blog, which gets about 100,000 unique hits a month. Reading her blog “allows you to get to know me, so you can understand what I’m writing about.” But the more you get to know Rambin, the more unsettling details you find out about her: A recent post shamed readers who won free products and then failed to send her thank-you notes, which drew ire from some of her most loyal fans.
Best post: She’s taken oversharing to a new level — her most popular video is on her first colonic.
Bonus points: Serves as a “brand ambassador” for Kodak; co-hosts a Web series, TMI Weekly, with Allison and Asha.
Next up: Moving to LA “to return to a more laid-back lifestyle.”
The Youngster:
Name: Adrien Field
Age: 20
Blog: GarconMag.com
Originally from: South Jersey
Now lives in: Upper East Side
Background: He might not be the biggest player in town, but he’s the youngest and quite possibly the hungriest. In 2007, while feeling “bored and stultified” in p.r., Field started Garcon, a men’s style blog that weighs in on pressing subjects like whether shorts are appropriate office attire. It gets about 25,000 hits per month and his personal blog, which chronicles behind-the-scenes scoop from fashion shows and benefits, gets about 12,000.
Best post: During Fall ’09 Fashion Week he posted a blind item about a “camera-obsessed, ass-kissing blogger/wannabe socialite” who accused him of sabotaging her. As a result, it got picked up on one of the reblogging sites, resulting in a flood of comments and speculation as to who it was, proving that being mean can benefit social standing!
Bonus points: Writes a column on the “fashion/society/media” scene called Playing the Field for fashionindie.com; correspondet for TMI Weekly.
Next up: Working on re-launching Random Night Out, a nightlife site with ex-Gawker video editor Nick McGlynn; trying to get his roman a clef, “The Making of a Social Climber,” published. His description of the book is ” ‘Bergdorf Blondes’ meets ‘Sex and the City’ as told from a gay perspective.”
The Hippie Hipster:
Name: Jessica Schroeder
Age: 26
Blog: LovePuppy.tumblr.com and
WhatIWore.tumblr.com
Originally from: Indiana
Now lives in: Fort Greene,
Brooklyn
Background: She’s the style icon to the hipster thrift-store set. 141,000 unique visitors a month flock to her personal style blog, What I Wore, where Schroeder can be found smiling in photos with accompanying descriptions of where she bought her vintage jackets and
floral-print dresses. “I talk a lot about being positive, and my spiritual beliefs, and decorating and sometimes food,” she says of Love Puppy.
Best post: Her upbeat persona eschews gossip for quotes from mythologist Joseph Campbell, shots of the Brooklyn Flea and declarations about her love for pastries and honey.
Bonus points: She’s the community and creative director with Weardrobe.com, an online fashion community
Next up: She just quit her day job as a fashion designer to work on Web projects fulltime.
The New Social Fixture:
Name: Ashley Simko
Age: 25
Blog: blog.AshleySimko.com
Originally from: Connecticut
Now lives in: Chelsea
Background: Simko, a graphic designer, started the blog as a repository for her myriad sources of inspiration, which include “Alice in Wonderland,” art made out of vegetables and Polaroids. She calls her blog something that “dips into the creative crowd of New York City.”
Best post: She met Kanye West in February after stepping on his foot at an after-party at the National Arts Club.
“I didn’t bother to take any photos,” she wrote. “I’m fairly certain that he would have obliged, but I’ve learned that when it comes to interacting with people that I admire, sometimes it’s better to just soak it all in — to leave with the memory of an inspiring chat, rather than a blurry photo taken by shoving another camera in their face.”
Bonus points: Spends quality time at opening parties for new restaurants like Minetta Tavern and old institutions like MoMA.
Next up: She remains tight-lipped on future projects, but the likelihood of seeing her in group shots by society photographer Patrick McMullan is high.
The Style Star:
Name: Paul Johnson-Calderon
Age: 24
Blog: PaperMag.com
Originally from: California
Now lives in: UWS
Background: After a stint interning at Vogue, he started freelancing for Paper, where he’s now the market editor and a style blogger. He defines his bowtie-loving style as “bohemian aristocrat with a touch of turn-of-the-century Russian peasant and a little rock ‘n’ roll.”
Best post: Meeting Patti Smith and blogging an election party (“I just remember the vibe being so real”).
Bonus points: Involved in making a Facebook application called iStyle that allows users to tag and share their outfits; bonded with “90210” star Shenae Grimes during Fall ’09 Fashion Week.
Next up: “The world will just have to stay tuned.”