Best Reading Material for 2014

There are tons upon tons — upon more tons — of fashion blogs, magazines and style-relevant newspapers on the internet, and there is a legitimate reason for the flood: clothing and style are endlessly interesting subjects, and writing about fashion trends, events and the industry is genuinely fun. A plethora of people want to write about this market, which means a reader in 2014 had more fashion writing to choose from than anyone could possibly keep up with.

This guide narrows that flood to a short shelf of favorites for 2014. Four resources earned full write-ups — Wonderwall, Style.com, Refinery29 and the Huffington Post — and seven more are suggested below them. Kept today as a historical 2014 guide, the page records what fashion reading looked like in the blog era: part magazine, part newspaper, part community, and updated around the clock. The companion best social media guide for 2014 covers the networks where much of this writing was shared.

The Four Featured Reads for 2014

Wonderwall — your celebrity destination for the latest celebrity gossip, news, videos, photos and more. Wonderwall is an interactive guide to all that is celebrity, and its style coverage follows what famous people actually wear. See the Wonderwall page for the full write-up.

Style.com — covering the world of fashion, designers, models, celebrities, beauty and shopping, with comprehensive runway reviews, images, videos and insider blogs. For show-by-show fashion reporting, it was the reference point of 2014. See the Style.com page for the full write-up.

Refinery29 — emerging fashion trends covered by experts. Refinery29 built a lifestyle platform around inspiration for a more stylish and creative life, and it rewards readers who want trends translated into everyday dressing. See the Refinery29 page for the full write-up.

Huffington Post — in addition to columns by Arianna Huffington and core contributors such as John Conyers, Harry Shearer, Jeff Pollack and Roy Sekoff, the Huffington Post carried many bloggers — politicians, celebrities, academics and policy experts — contributing on a wide range of topics, including fashion and style.

More Reading Suggestions for 2014

Beyond the featured four, these sites were also suggested for 2014: Fashionista, PopSugar, Racked, WhoWhatWear, The Fashion Spot, Stylelist and TheCut. Each had its own flavor — industry news, celebrity style, shopping intelligence, street photography and magazine-style commentary — so the right mix depended on whether you read fashion as a business, a hobby or a daily dressing problem.

The Apparel Search fashion blog belongs on the same shelf: it covered the industry from the directory side, with news, people and products from across the fashion world. And for reported news rather than commentary, the fashion news section here on Apparel Search gathers the site's news coverage in one place.

How a Short List Gets Built From an Ocean of Blogs

The internet is bubbling over with blogs and news resources writing specifically about fashion, so putting together a best-of list is admittedly challenging. The approach here was the old college try: pick resources that a fashion consumer opening a browser in 2014 would genuinely enjoy, favor sites that published consistently and covered clothing and style with real knowledge, and leave the list open — a tremendous new resource could always be added when it came to attention.

Read historically, the list also shows how fashion media worked just before social feeds took over the front page: readers still visited homepages, subscribed to newsletters and followed favorite writers by name. The three featured-site pages that accompany this guide — on Wonderwall, Style.com and Refinery29 — each look at one model of that era's fashion publishing in depth.

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