Being a fashion blogger may seem easy on the outside when you see all the glitz and the glam, but to be fair, it’s not an easy feat to run a successful blog, let alone a highly-paid one. Why? Well, one reason is that there are potentially as many as 60 million fashion blogs out there competing for readers’ attention. But the main reason is that it takes hard work, contrary to what it may look like.
Fashion blogging can be a lucrative career for those who have “made it,” so in today’s article, we’ll introduce you to ten of the highest paid fashion bloggers and talk about what makes a successful fashion blog.
What Makes a Successful Fashion Blog?
Anyone can start a fashion blog, but not everyone can run it successfully. Besides the basics, like choosing a chic template, you also need to choose a superior blogging tool to make running and optimizing it a breeze. However, your content also needs to be top-notch, and even when it isn’t, you have to be consistent with posting to build momentum.
Most experienced fashion bloggers would say that the two hallmarks of running a successful fashion blog are finding a sub-niche you’re interested in and offering authentic content. Fashion is really a broad term, so in order to make your blog easily recognizable to others, you need to narrow it down. Essentially, choose what you want to focus on, be it sustainable fashion, haute couture, editorials, minimalist fashion, or affordable fashion.
In addition to this, offering authentic content and staying true to your vision seems to be another winner. As you will see in our list of the highest paid fashion bloggers, all of them have become very successful, but it didn’t happen overnight. Their blogging businesses had been slowly evolving before they became what they are today. So, remember to choose what you really like and stick to the vision you have created, as that’s the best way to enjoy the fruits of your labor.
How Much Do Fashion Bloggers Earn On Average?
As we said, blogging about fashion can be a very lucrative career choice, but a fashion blogger’s income depends on many things – there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. For example, some sub-niches are better paid than others because they provide more opportunities for collaboration.
Fashion bloggers mostly earn through ads and affiliate marketing, but these two streams of income aren’t nearly as high as an endorsement deal with a brand (depending, of course, on the blogger and the brand).
Therefore, on average, fashion bloggers can earn anywhere between $20,000 and $40,000 per year, but there are bloggers who earn less and considerably more, as you’ll see on our list.
10 Highest Paid Fashion Bloggers
Chiara Ferragni (The Blonde Salad)
One of the most successful and highest-paid fashion bloggers is Chiara Ferragni, the founder of The Blonde Salad. Ferragni is an Italian blogger, businesswoman, fashion designer, and model who has managed to turn her blog into a fashion powerhouse.
She started The Blonde Salad in 2009 while she was a law student. The idea was for her blog to be her own personal space where she could freely share her interest in fashion and inspire others. As for naming it The Blonde Salad, in her own words, it was like “a salad of herself.”
She started uploading photos of herself wearing various different outfits along with descriptions of what she wore and little snippets of her day. She posted the accompanying paragraphs and captions in both Italian and English so that she could reach a wider audience – and she did.
The blog grew quickly, and within two years Ferragni became one of the most influential fashion bloggers, as seen on lists like the “Forbes 30 under 30” and “Top Fashion Influencers.” She started collaborating with big brands and modeling for them, and she even launched her own clothing line.
The Blonde Salad was rebranded in 2016 from a personal style blog into one of the biggest fashion and lifestyle media outlets, and Ferragni is still thriving as one of the top fashion influencers on Instagram with over 27 million followers and counting.
Leonie Hanne (Leonie Hanne)
Leonie Hanne is a German blogger, model, and social media entrepreneur, founder of the blog Leonie Hanne, formerly known as Ohh Couture. She started her blog in 2014 after she left her job as a strategy consultant to pursue a career in fashion, and she succeeded. In addition to collaborating with a handful of top designers, she was also signed by one of the biggest British modeling agencies and walked the runway for major fashion brands.
The content on her blog consists of photos of daily outfits, shopping hauls, and fashion show photos, along with brief but detailed paragraphs where she shares her thoughts and experiences with the readers. In addition to this, she has a whole travel section on her blog, which is almost like a travel diary, where she posts photos of her travels and holiday outfits and writes down her impressions of all the different places she visits.
Hanne has three university degrees – fashion, business, and textile management. After her blogging career took off, she ventured into social media and digital marketing by launching her LA Studio on her blog. Lastly, her blog includes a curated designer shop where readers can buy clothing from top designers.
Julie Sariñana (Sincerely Jules)
Julie Sariñana is a Mexican-American blogger, model, and designer who is the face of her fashion and lifestyle blog, Sincerely Jules. She started her blog in 2009 while studying visual communications, interning at a trend forecasting company, and working a 9-to-5 job. She started her blog as an outlet for her creativity as well as a source of inspiration and decided to seriously pursue it.
Sincerely Jules is a collage of daily fashion, beauty, and lifestyle tips and tricks as well as discussions about favorite beauty products, daily outfits, travel logs, thoughts, collaborations, and more. It’s simply a hub of authentic content that shows what Sariñana is all about.
Her blog grew steadily over time, placing her among the most influential fashion bloggers and leading to her collaborating with a number of brands. She eventually launched her own shop and clothing line and a line of nail polish. The shop on her website features curated designer clothes, clothes from her own brand, and collaborations she has done.
Danielle Bernstein (We Wore What)
Another “Forbes 30 under 30” member on our list of highest-paid fashion bloggers is Danielle Bernstein, founder, and CEO of her blog-turned-clothing brand We Wore What. The blog started as a street style blog in 2010, where she went around New York and photographed what people were wearing.
The idea was to create simple daily inspiration logs of the unique fashion trends in New York. Over time, though, her street style blog morphed into a personal style one, and when Instagram started taking off, she began transforming We Wore What into a full-blown brand.
We Wore What is now predominantly an online store that sells different clothing categories, swimwear, and activewear. However, even though the platform is now e-commerce oriented, there’s still a dedicated We Wore What blog where Bernstein and her staff regularly post fashion and lifestyle content.
Bernstein wrote a memoir called This is Not a Fashion Story: Taking Chances, Breaking Rules, and Being a Boss in the Big City that documents her journey from starting out as a blogger to turning into a businesswoman. The memoir was published in 2020 and became a New York Times bestseller.
Aimee Song (Song of Style)
Aimee Song is an Asian-American blogger, designer, and author. Another highly successful fashion blogger on “Forbes 30 under 30” and a New York Times bestselling author, she started her blog Song of Style in 2008 while studying interior architecture and working two part-time jobs.
Her blogging started as a hobby and as a way to share her favorite interior designs and decors. However, over time, her passion for fashion and style started coming out, and soon her interior design blog turned into a personal style blog, evolving into a serious career over time.
She has worked with a number of famous brands and is a fashion ambassador for a handful of designers. In 2019, she became a designer herself when she launched her first collection in collaboration with Revolve.
Her once personal fashion blog is now an online clothing store that sells apparel under her own brand, Song of Style, while her blogging activities are relocated to Instagram and YouTube. She’s still very active and posts advice, fashion and beauty content, and updates about her life.
Song is the author of two non-fiction books, Capture Your Style: Transform Your Instagram Photos, Showcase Your Life, and Build the Ultimate Platform and Aimee Song: World of Style, published in 2016 and 2018, respectively.
Wendy Nguyen (Wendy’s Lookbook)
Wendy Nguyen is a Vietnamese blogger, stylist, and juvenile justice advocate. She launched her blog Wendy’s Lookbook after quitting her job of five years in the finance industry. She decided to pursue a career in fashion by launching a blog and simultaneously creating a YouTube channel where she started posting fashion and beauty videos. In addition to her career-changing direction, she also started getting involved with community organizations that advocate for foster care and incarcerated youth.
The rest seems to be history because today, Wendy’s Lookbook – the blog, the YouTube channel, and the Instagram profile – is thriving. She shares style and beauty tricks, snippets of her travels, and outfit inspiration. She also has a shop on her blog where readers can shop her looks and get a piece of her style.
Camila Coelho (Camila Coelho)
Camila Coelho is a Brazilian blogger, makeup artist, model, fashion designer, entrepreneur, and content creator who has worked with some major brands. She started blogging around 2011 when she also launched her two YouTube channels, one in Portuguese and one in English.
She posts fashion, beauty, and lifestyle videos, as well as a lot of makeup videos and vlogs. Her eponymous blog is filled with fashion, beauty, and travel content sprinkled with some personal updates.
Besides blogging, Coelho has ventured into entrepreneurship by launching two different brands of her own – a clothing brand and a beauty brand that she often promotes on her blog and on social media.
Chriselle Lim (The Chriselle Factor)
Chriselle Lim is a Korean-American blogger, YouTuber, fashion stylist, and entrepreneur who worked on the business side of fashion before deciding to cross the border and do creative work.
Before she started blogging and launched The Chriselle Factor in 2011, she started filming videos for YouTube, posting her first video in 2008. She gained a considerable number of subscribers over the years by posting fashion and style-related videos. Her YouTube channel is still very active, though after becoming the owner and creative director of a perfume brand, she rebranded her channel and deleted the old videos.
Her YouTube channel aside, The Chriselle Factor is a fashion, beauty, and lifestyle hub, and it was fully active from its inception up until around the beginning of 2022. These days, Lim is more focused on her perfume brand, her YouTube channel, and micro-blogging on Instagram, as is the case with most fashion influencers nowadays.
Katherine Power and Hillary Kerr (Who What Wear)
Katherine Power and Hilary Kerr are the founders of the fashion and lifestyle blog-turned-brand, Who What Wear. They launched Who What Wear in 2006 while they both worked at ELLE magazine.
Who What Wear started as a fashion blog and newsletter where Power and Kerr were posting about the latest fashion news and events. The blog quickly gained a faithful readership and kept on growing in the coming years, leading them to publish two fashion books – Who What Wear: Celebrity and Runway Style For Real Life and What to Wear, Where in 2009 and 2011, respectively.
The blog is filled with a variety of fashion and beauty-related content – anything from the latest trends and shopping to exclusive interviews, seasonal trend roundups, product reviews, and then some.
With content like this, over time, Who What Wear became one of the most well-known fashion websites, placing Power and Kerr in “Forbes 40 under 40” and various other publications. In 2016, the pair launched their clothing and accessory line in collaboration with Target Corporation. Their first apparel collection was launched in 2021, and it’s sold in their online shop.
Victoria Magrath (Inthefrow)
Victoria Magrath is a blogger, content creator, and brand consultant. She launched her blog Inthefrow in 2012 while she was in the midst of working on her Ph.D. in fashion and working as a Fashion Marketing lecturer.
The name of the blog, or rather the "frow" part of it, is a contraction of "front row." She’s alluding to the front rows in fashion shows where usually all the top faces of fashion are seated to get the best views of the clothes and the show.
Magrath fulfilled her ambition as her blogging career took off, leading her blog to win numerous awards. On top of that, she started working with many brands, which led to her becoming a brand ambassador for top-tier designers.
Besides offering rich fashion and travel content, the posts labeled under lifestyle contain insightful and more personal articles, where she shares opinions, reflections, and advice on profound topics. But besides blogging traditionally, Magrath also has a very active YouTube channel, where she mostly posts vlogs, among other content.
Lastly, in 2018 Magrath also published her first book called The New Fashion Rules: Inthefrow, where she combined her lecturer experience with her expansive knowledge of the world of fashion.
Over and Out
Fashion has always been a lucrative venture. Though not easy, it’s certainly not impossible to become successful as a blogger in this area. We hope that we provided some insight into the world of fashion bloggers and showed you a glimpse of how it all works. Until next time!