Tavi Gevinson earns acclaim with Style Rookie fashion blog
Posted by Lucky on Dec 30, 2009
Tavi Gevinson sat in a west suburban cafe consuming cheese pizza, hot chocolate and a fruit roll-up — the type of meal you’d expect from a 13-year-old.
As she nibbled, a receptionist from her doctor’s office came over to say hello, while a waitress wondered aloud if she was related to another teenager in town.
“As you can see, my fame is extraordinary here,” Tavi said, her 4-foot-6 frame barely visible behind the table. “Seriously, no one around here has any idea who I am.”
No idea that since she began blogging about fashion from her suburban bedroom at age 11, Tavi has become an international sensation, viewed as one of the most popular — and controversial — figures in the world of high fashion.
No idea that when she’s not studying for a science test, having sleepovers with friends or attending summer camp, the eighth-grader can be found in the front row at New York’s Fashion Week, adorning the cover of ultra-hip Pop magazine and helping to launch a new fashion line for Target.
The daughter of a high school English teacher, Tavi combined her razor-sharp writing skills, precocious attitude and Internet savvy into a high profile in the fashion community, using her youth and small size as bold exclamation points.
“She’s only 13, but Tavi Gevinson has the fashion world enraptured,” gushed Harper’s Bazaar in the introduction to a column Tavi penned, making her the youngest writer published in the magazine.
Like a pint-size suburban superhero, Tavi passes her days as a typical middle school student before transforming by night into a celebrated author and star of her blog, Style Rookie. She posts photos of herself dressed in cutting-edge outfits and serves up sophisticated musings on the latest fashion trends, drawing nearly 30,000 readers each day.
She’s a teen phenomenon that would have been impossible before the Internet, but her success is not just virtual. Tavi has recently leapt into the scene on which she comments, submitting to a photo shoot in London, hanging with elite fashion designers in Tokyo and hobnobbing with singer Gwen Stefani, actress Chloe Sevigny and other celebrity guests at a Los Angeles event.
“There are two stories here,” said her mother, Berit Engen. “The 13-year-old who lives in our house, and the 13-year-old who is being taken very seriously in this world of fashion.”
Some in the industry suggest the young blogger could be more novelty than anything, but Harper’s, Target and others are betting on her.
Asked if she was worried about being used as a gimmick, Tavi said she would never be a part of anything that she does not admire. She has said no to 95 percent of interview requests. She’s declined reality show pitches and book deals.
And she says she will stop blogging if it causes her grades to suffer.
The youngest of three sisters, Tavi has grown up on a quiet, tree-lined street in a community west of Chicago. (She asked that her suburb go unnamed so that she might remain low-profile in her hometown.)
It’s a world with a dress code (her school prohibits skirts with hems above the knee and tank tops with straps less than three fingers wide) and limited activity. Tavi said she frequents three places: her local Borders, a record shop and a Salvation Army store. Most of her socializing takes place at sleepovers, theater camp and bar and bat mitzvahs.
“That’s why the Internet is so important,” Tavi said.
It has given her an endless supply of music, fashion and other types of art. At her keyboard, she has developed expertise on a wide range of subjects — from Bob Dylan, her favorite singer, to Japan’s Rei Kawakubo, one of her fashion design heroes.
The inspiration for Style Rookie came, she said, in sixth grade. A friend’s teenage sister had launched a Web site in which she posted critiques of fashion trends and photographs of herself modeling.
Tavi had become interested in fashion, thanks to Seventeen Magazine and the TV show America’s Next Top Model. A blog seemed like an escape from the Abercrombie, pre-teen scene.
“Life is boring in sixth grade,” said Tavi, whose blog debuted in March 2008.
source:http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-teen-fashion-sensationdec30,0,4565994.story
