Style Rookie: When a 12-year-old Tavi Gevinson penned her first Style Rookie post back in 2008, the world finally had what it always needed: a bright kid who wasn’t afraid to show up to middle school math class dressed like Rei Kawakubo after stumbling into Party City’s Halloween aisle. But after four years of hanging in Rodarte’s #frow, a then 15-year-old Tavi opened Rookie up to a world beyond style and created the ultimate feminist platform for teens everywhere. Don’t get us wrong, we’re massive Rookie fans and fully support the transition, but we can’t be the only ones who miss 12-year-old Tavi’s grandma dressing days, right? Although she now only uses Style Rookie to post the occasional update about Rookie’s goings-on, its entire wonderfully weird archive is still very much accessible. We seriously recommend taking a deep dive and looking back at which Twin Peaks screenshots influenced her style, as well as re-reading her early Fashion Week reviews. Remember, this is a girl who interviewed John Galliano when she was 14.
Epicly Later’d: Before Epicly Later’d became a series of Vice documentaries about some of skateboarding’s most colorful characters, it was photographer and filmmaker Patrick O’Dell’s photo blog. Although O’Dell put the blog to bed three years ago, the site is still up (!!!!) so you can check out all the homemade tattoos and buzz-cut skate rats he documented on medium format film. Spanning from 2004 to 2012, it’s a seriously epic time capsule of the days before Instagram.
Turned Out: Photographer Maya Handley is still showing work in unexpected spaces (recently, her images were on display at a Chinatown laundromat as a part of The Spring Cleaning group show). But one place you won’t be able to see her candid images of New York City streets is on her blog, TurnedOut.tv. Although it was often billed as a style blog, Turned Out looked more like a digital zine-cum-diary. Maya played with image proportions, created collages and uploaded abstract stop motion videos.
4archive: Menswear magazine nerds felt a part of their souls die with the mysterious disappearance of 4archive.net. The Tumblr consisted mostly of archival scans of editorials, with all of the designers, photographers, stylists, and publications organized in a single clickable directory. Whoever was curating the site not only had an insane image bank, but incredible taste: Raf Simons, Willy Vanderperre, Olivier Rizzo, Paul Sinclaire, Corrine Day, Panos Yiapanis, and tons of Alasdair McLellan’s beautiful British boys graced its pages. Although these images are still in circulation through reblogs and likes, the original source is nothing but a domain name. Come back 4archive, wherever you are.
White Lightning: Before splitting to San Francisco to creative direct AFAR magazine, Elizabeth Spiridakis was a T Magazine designer, the artistic director of Bon Appetit and, most importantly, the blurry iPhone photographer behind White Lightning. An encyclopedic brain for all things 90s set Elizabeth apart from other bloggers who couldn’t tell Mazzy Star from Milli Vanilli. White Lightning was where Butthole Surfers and Prada bathing caps collided, where Nicolas Cage met Céline, and — although it dried up in 2011 — where you can still find a shitload of great playlists.
Credits
Text Emily Manning
Photography Petra Collins
Styling Tavi Gevinson