Fashion blogger influence and social media presence

Fashion Blogger

Cairo:

Heba Elkayal is a fashion blogger from Cairo, Egypt and also writes columns on fashion for the Daily News Egypt. In Egypt, Elkayal supports local designers and within the current fashion season, the fashion designers are working with materials and creating designs which embrace traditional Egyptian culture but also that embrace modern attitudes. In her blog, Elkayal compares fashion design to other forms of art created by Egyptians and elevates her field by doing so.[footnoteRef:1] She is popular within her culture because she supports those in fashion and provides positive feedback rather than focusing on the negatives. Egypt has a rich cultural heritage which dates back to ancient times and the pharaohs. The materials and textiles of those periods are still used today. Some people think of this part of the world as oppressive to women, but Elkayal does not see this as the case. Most clothing from here is somewhat conservative by western standards but that does not mean that the people are trying to oppress women. The clothing styles that Elkayal talks about are conservative but they also show the influence of the rest of the world. [1: Heba Elkayal. "Heba Elkayal." 2011. Accessed March 16, 2013. http://hebaelkayal.tumblr.com / ]

Beirut:

Deema J. Al Saidi's blog is a pictorial collection with limited written language on it. Instead she focuses on the pictures and the clothing that is featured in each photograph. Only then does she provide an attribution at the bottom of each picture that shows where the items of clothing came from.[footnoteRef:2] The focus of her blog is on the clothing and, in particular, how the items look on a real human woman of flesh and blood. Many of the pictures in the blog are of models, but there are also a great number of pictures that are just of regular people who happen to be in clothing that she thinks are beautiful. Al Saidi's blog speaks to people beyond her own country and her own culture. She even has a picture of a woman in a Mickey Mouse sweater opening up the limits of what is considered to be fashion and this appeals to the people in Beirut and outside the nation as well. Even people who do not speak the language of people from Beirut will understand what she is trying to explain in her pictures and the modern style of the people of her land. [2: Deema J. Al Saidi. "Plush Beirut." Blogger, 2013. Accessed March 16, 2013. http://www.plush-beirut.net/]

Kuwait: