Girl, where have you been?

Hello stranger(s). It’s been a hot minute! Well, try months… But I’m back. Again. How many times have I said that before? Countless, probably. But we all need to take breaks sometimes. I’ve missed this space. I’ve missed writing. I’ve missed putting sometimes controversial, often rather meaningful, and usually always relatable pieces out to the internet and getting dm’s from you guys saying “thank you for writing this, it’s so good to feel like I’m not the only one who feels this way!” – if there is one thing I’ve learnt through my blog and my instagram and opening up about certain topics: we are most certainly NEVER alone in our feelings. If anything, so many of us feel the exact same way. It’s just we don’t always talk about it. We don’t know how to talk about it. 

I guess that’s where I come in. To use my blog to talk about these things, as well as other stuff. Plus, I have a totally new look! Gone is the name Fashion Slave. It was a difficult choice in some ways as for people who’ve followed me for a long time, I know you know me as “fashion slave” rather than just Sophie. Changing what is essentially your brand could be a big problem. But I suppose I’ve been away from the blog for so long that it actually feels like now is a better time than ever to reinvent things a little bit. So here we have it: sophiemilner.co.uk – yeah, I am still raging my parents didn’t give me a cool name like “Violet La Roux” or “Blossom van der Wand”. But Sophie Milner is my name, and all of the other Sophie-related domains I actually liked were either taken, or cost £25k. No thanks.

shop my outfit here (affiliate)

Also, my blog isn’t even about fashion anymore, really. So whilst I love fashion and it will always be some part of me AND this blog, “fashion slave” seems an irrelevant name. I came up with it the name when I was sitting writing my dissertation on fashion bloggers in the library at 4am and was like “wow I am a SLAVE to fashion” – that’s the history behind it. But as the years have passed and there’s been more focus on the relationship between fashion AND slavery publicised, it seemed a bit inappropriate, as well as making myself a bit of an easy target. This was another reason why I fell off the radar with my blog – I had the ideas, I just didn’t want to put them on THIS platform. I didn’t want to blog under a name I felt wasn’t the right representation of myself.

There’s another reason I stopped posting on here. I shoot most of my content for Instagram on my iPhone and I don’t have the time to go out and shoot professional SLR shots to accompany my posts a lot of the time. So, I’d have some great written content and no photos I deemed worthy of the blog to go on here, just a bunch of simple iPhone shots for the gram. I felt guilty using my iPhone photos on a platform like this. It didn’t seem good enough. But I’ve realised, fuck it. I’ll use the photos I post on Instagram here. Sure, they’ll be a little rawer and less glossy, but they’ll be a bit more real. I like to remain pretty authentic and open and real on my Instagram anyway – so why would I stop that over here?  I need to let go of trying to be so perfect all of the time. Striving for perfection can really hold you back – and this is case in point. Surely posting my thoughts and my words and doing what I love most – writing – and getting it done is better than not doing it at all in fear of it not being “perfect”. Another reason was I just wasn’t loving my blog design or blog name. 

So it’s a new era. And it feels good. There may be a few teething issues with my new blog. There always are. If you have any, please DM me and let me know what’s going on! 

But I promise that I am here and I’m back and I’m going to be creating content. Right here. 

Happy new year! 

shop my favourite teddy coats here! affiliate