Fella fashion blogger Lesley Scott is the “New York City-based Editor-in-Chief & Publisher of Fashiontribes.com, five fashion & lifestyle magazines customized by fashion personality or ‘tribe’, a daily blog, podcast, and even the occasional videoblog.” Podcasting daily for the Podcaster News network about the fashion industry, penning a weekly column for the Fashion Designers section of Suite 101,and Blog Editor-at-Large for Glam.com, a popular online fashion & shopping media site with an extensive network of influential fashion, beauty, lifestyle & celebrity blogs —

She must drink as many soy lattes as I do.

Check Fashion Tribes’ shopcast here, and read on as I play Q&A with Lesley.

: When did girl meet blog?

Lesley: The Fashiontribes Daily blog is about 1.5 years old. I discovered blogging and podcasting pretty much in their infancy, and before many people even knew what the words meant. In fact, I was the first fashion journalist to podcast from New York’s Fashionweek. I realized quickly what a powerful way it was to share all my finds with my readers, without the time lag and excessive formality of the magazine format.

: I think fashion blogging and ThisNext have soy latte and shopping dates together, what about you?

Lesley: I think fashion blogging and ThisNext go hand in hand because they’re both more about personal style and expression than dictating to people what’s in or promoting just the most popular. What do you think? Blogging is much more immediate and personal, and that’s what readers of Fashiontribes Daily like. They not only like the fact that they can find out what the next big thing is, way before it hits the print world, but they can tell me what they think. I often get email feedback about stuff posted on the blog; sometimes it’s to vent, but usually it’s a friendly “hey!” or, “I really liked that fab whatever you posted – thanks!”

: Ooh la love, exactly. How is your take on fashion via Fashion Tribes different than it could have been if you were writing for a magazine?

Lesley: I started Fashiontribes.com about two years ago. Based on years of shooting and writing about streetfashion, fashion, beauty & lifestyle for publications like Marie Claire Asia, 25 Ans, GQ Taiwan, and Elle Girl Korea as the New York-based Senior Editor for Coolhunt.net - a global trendspotting firm - I realized that the way you dress speaks volumes about the rest of your life. Dress in Chanel and sport the “must-have” handbag of the season? Chances are, you’re not downtown enjoying Jagermeister or Pabst Blue Ribbon, decked out in leather at heavy metal karaoke night at Arlene’s Grocery in NYC’s Lower East Side. And that’s the point of Fashiontribes: to bring choices to the various different fashion personalities, or tribes; despite all the great choices available, there’s a scary degree of sameness that dominates mainstream fashion magazines.

When I finally had the opportunity to do my own thing, I knew I didn’t want to be yet another print magazine. For one thing, the costs are prohibitive, and your reach as a small publisher is limited, at best. On the internet, you can reach a global audience. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve attended fashion press events & had (usually older) fashion publicists ask me about my “circulation”; I generally have a hard time keeping a straight face as the shock & awe slowly crosses their faces as they realize an operation like mine has more readers than a print giant like Marie Claire on the newsstands. Gawker put it best in one of in one of their posts about the fact that the print world is finally starting to acknowledge “there might be something to this www thing.”

Also, the time lag is a problem, especially with the immediacy of fashion. Print magazines work so far out – 4 to 6 months – that by the time the issue hits the stands, the information can almost feel stale, or worse, irrelevant. I remember being asked in February to shoot street fashion for the June or July issues of various magazines, and “please make it summery” and I’d kind of scratch my head, wondering if these editors were aware of the weather situation in a place like New York during the middle of winter. It just never made sense to me. Online, however, you can shoot something, and within minutes, post it to your site or blog, and readers are getting real time information about what’s going on in fashion as it happens.