Interview with Gwyneth Moore founder of cardifffashion.com

Source

I first discovered Gwyneth Moore last summer. I was interning at ITV Wales and I had been given an opportunity to write a guest blog for their website. Fashion was my obvious choice but finding a current story for this proved a challenge. I decided on a charity fashion show piece and set up various interviews to help with my article. That was when I first spoke to Gwyneth and I remember feeling a huge sense of relief that someone was willing to help a trainee journalist. Due to this experience I knew that Gwyneth would be perfect to interview in my quest to establish a successful blog.

Why? Because she writes the most successful fashion blog in Wales: cardifffashion.com, finally putting the welsh capital on the fashion map. As she drove home from a busy day at work we discussed how she managed to crack the blogging sphere.

“I’ve not necessarily got the background people expect me to have.” She explained as I asked her how her blogging career began. Indeed, Gwyneth was as a graduate of Fashion Design at the National School of Design in Sydney and also has a BA in Communications and Linguistics. Growing up in Sydney gave the blogger a different view of the fashion industry as she said how “it was fairly undeveloped in Australia back when I was there; it has a smaller population so it developed less quickly. But now it has a much better following.”

This did not prevent her keen interest in the fashion industry however as she has had some fashion illustrator pieces commissioned. But she said “that I never wanted to be a designer, I was more interested in the communication aspect.”

Gwyneth’s background in communication would be the footing she needed to spot the increasing significance of the blogging world. She left a PR job three years ago when she realised how social media was having a bigger impact on communication.

“I wanted to develop my knowledge in this, sit down, and then jump in. Facebook and Bebo were huge and fashion blogging was developing so quickly.’ Gwyneth saw how the world of fashion was suited perfectly to blogging as it was a place where someone could share many ideas in a place where everyone had an opinion. Gwyneth had seen the potential and as she lectured in the University of Glamorgan she saw a way to spread her knowledge.

Source

“It started as an experiment at first. I didn’t want to focus on welsh designers as there are not enough of them. I came up with Cardiff Fashion because, at the end of the day Cardiff is the capital of Wales and I can’t change that”. Luckily with her PR background Gwyneth was able to see how this fitting name for her blog would benefit from a search engine perspective. If you Google Cardiff her blog is one of the first to appear in the searches. This meant that after a lot of hard work her blog became very popular.

“It is still fascinating for me on how this idea has turned into so many other things” she said continuing with a list of the dreams she has turned into a reality due to the promotion of her blog. Gwyneth has done a project with Fashion Week, Channel 4 is regularly in touch and she is currently writing a book on fashion promotion and communication.

But being a mum of two and having many jobs alongside her blog has not made her success easy. “It does take time, I certainly believe there has to be that consistency” explained Gwyneth illustrating how the reality of blogging is not always glamorous parties and freebies.

I asked her what she thought made a good blog, keen to hear what I would need to make my blog contain the same magic as cardifffashion.com. “It all depends on good writing, like Susie Bubble as she is a bloody good writer. Not every man and his dog can write a successful blog, there must be good content”.

Source

I was struck by Gwyneth’s passion for this new world for journalism. She had seen how her skills could be moulded to social media and had made her own success through determination and hard work. Her blog continues to thrive and before we said goodbye she told me how she had lots of new ideas.

“I really want to do more street style; there are really stylish people in Cardiff. Some people don’t see it as a stylish city but they looked pretty good to me last Saturday!” 

See Gwyneth's blog HERE