Six Years of The Mutant Stomp Friends!

The 6th anniversary of this blog came and went in the recent past. I started this in 2010. The economy was in shambles and I, like many, was unemployed. My sister and I had the idea to join Lookbook.nu together. (Though my sister never ended up joining.) Being on Lookbook was kind of useless if you didn't have a blog, so the early days were basically outfit shots, which as many of you know take a LOT of time to do. While I did have some content in the early days--like how to DIY V bangs--there wasn't a lot of content. It was pretty much only outfit shots.

A photo from the Lookbook days.  For the life of me I couldn't understand why this was one of my more popular ones (98 hypes). The image quality is terrible and I'm not wearing any of the "it" brands.

A year later I got a job and got a DSLR (not a very good one but still), so the quality of the photos got better. I had to always shoot in manual, because my refurbished DSLR didn't support ANY automatic functionality.

Until I broke my camera of course. The moment that happened, I realized my OOTD style blogging days were basically over, since you need a good camera (and good lighting, which I most definitely do not have). I kind of gave up for a few months, until I discovered blog challenges! My first post was 5 wardrobe staples every goth needs and that was when I realized that I actually like talking about this dark fashion stuff more than taking a bunch of OOTDs. 

The 5 things...still true today, IMO

So that's where the modern iteration of this blog began, from a blog challenge.

Questions about me and the blog:

Do you have an alternative job or work in the fashion industry?
No, I work in mainstream book publishing at one of the big five.

There are a lot of spelling mistakes and punctuation errors...
I'm off the clock.

Why don't you write about personal stuff? 
The blog is escapist fun for me. I have a stressful job and I freelance on the side, and any problems most people have are 10x worse in NYC. I'd rather spend one day a week looking at pretty clothes than talking about myself. I do this to get away from myself!

Are you a goth?
The alternative subculture I once identified with (the rivetheads) is long gone, but even back then, it was easier to just say you were a goth than to explain the difference. In fact, there was a rivalry between the two groups--that probably never actually existed. If you think a goth is someone who listens to the 5 mainstream goth bands on repeat for 20+ years, then no, I'm most certainly not goth. If you think a goth is someone who wears all black and pentagrams and shit, then yeah. But only posers care about labels...you're not a poser, are you?

Are you spiritual/wicca/pagan?
No, though I do tarot for fun.

So if you're not a goth and not pagan, why write weekly posts on goth fashion?
Dark fashion. I enjoy wearing it and enjoy seeing it on others.

How do you manage to write weekly posts?
I sometimes fall behind when I've got a heavy freelance load, but I usually write several of them at once and schedule them for Thursdays.

Why Thursday?
I feel like other bloggers post early on in the week, and there's a lull in posts mid-to-late week.

I'm a marketing manager and I'm in charge of social media outreach. I've got a great idea for your blog. Can you write about [something not related to dark fashion] and link to our site?
My favorite was the financial services outreach. I mean, what does that have to do with dark fashion? My readers are here for gothy-type looks and would not be interested in men's tuxes or event planning or what-have-you. If you've got something related to dark fashion, sure, I'd be happy to cover it if I can think of a creative, original post for it that doesn't make me sound like a shill.

What do you like to blog about?
Trend forecasting would probably be my favorite, which includes all the pantone posts. Trends are probably my second favorite.  I also like writing styling posts...like how to wear stuff to the office or whatever.

Lastly, thank you for hanging around these 6 years and reading and commenting on my posts! It means a lot to me to be part of such a badass-looking community. What posts do you like reading about? Which ones are you indifferent to?