New Blog Design | Fashion Et Moi Relaunch

Hello! And welcome to the next era of Fashion Et Moi!

I thought that after four years – that’s right, it is Fashion Et Moi’s fourth birthday today! – it was about time for a redesign and an all important migration over to self-hosted WordPress.

I had felt quite blocked over the past few months regarding the design of my previously Blogger hosted site. I felt that I had outgrown my cute header and layout with lots of widgets in the side bar and this meant I was reluctant to publish posts on a site that I was not proud of. ‘Why produce content I'm proud of when I will not be proud of the final published look’, I thought – perhaps that was silly but you cannot control this type of creative emotion.

It took me a while to come up with my new site design. I knew that my blog would never have a landing page, lots of stuff going on on the page or force the reader to click on countless buttons to get to the actual content because I love to scroll. My favourite blogs to read have lovely simple designs where I can scroll endlessly (well for a few posts at least) without having to click a single button to see the content. I love that so obviously had to keep that functionality for my own site.

Another thing I knew that I wanted to improve was my imagery. Photography has always been one of my favourite past times so the images are now much more varied within the post – some laying side by side with text and others are bigger, sometimes taking up the entire page and I absolutely love it. I think this will also force me to improve the photography at the point of creation, as the images need to be sans blur to cope with being blown up so big.

Finally let’s talk about the aesthetic. I knew that my background would remain white but it was the header that I struggled with. Lots of the blogs that I read have just a simple black, typed header and while I like this look, I want my blog to stand out from that. Suddenly, while in the shower one evening, an idea came to me. That’s always the way, you have to be patient and wait for ideas to come to you rather than bashing out a brainstorming session.

I decided to handwrite my own header. I have always been told that I have lovely handwriting and I thought it would add a personal touch to my blog – what do you think? Ok so handwriting your own header is not exactly groundbreaking but the key to this idea is that I am going to change the colours of the writing - perhaps seasonally, according to current trends or with colour combinations that I am particularly loving. I hope that this will keep things fresh and interesting for you, the readers, and also stop me getting bored with my own aesthetic.

Regarding my migration from Blogger to self-hosted WordPress. It is something that I had been thinking about for about a year maybe, since I had heard and read about the advantages and freedom of WordPress vs the limitations of Blogger. Then, since doing a digital marketing internship over the past few months, learning more about SEO and working on many WordPress backends, I realised that the migrations was essential. So voilà! I am now a WordPress convert and I could not be happier.

I hope you like the new site as much as I do! There are definitely still some minute details that need smoothing over but it was about time that I just got on and launched it! I am now feeling super motivated and able to produce content that I am truly proud of. Here’s to your makeover Fashion Et Moi – you’re looking fab at four years old babe – Happy Birthday!

Izzie X