The pioneering blogger speaks to Alice Audley about the pursuit of perfection, staying ahead of the curve and what needs to change within the blogging industry.
Luxury fashion blogger Victoria Magrath of Inthefrow is stretched out on a white leather sofa. She’s wearing a pale denim jumpsuit and a pair of gold and cream Gianvito Rossi Calabria Courts.
A series of intricate tattoos are etched onto her alabaster skin, from the delicate ‘arise’ on the arch of her foot to the ‘you live you learn’ entwined in vines on the nape of her neck.
Her platinum hair cascades over her shoulders and falls in gentle waves to just below her chest. Her bright blue eyes are focused directly to camera and the task in hand. And she owns it. She is beautiful. She is powerful. She is, well, perfect.
“I’ve always been someone who wanted to be the best they can be,” Victoria says in her northern lilt while twirling a strand of shiny hair between her slender, manicured fingers, “I’ve always pushed myself.”
This pursuit of perfection and accompanying work ethic (“I haven’t taken one day off since I started blogging”) is undoubtedly why the 27-year-old has managed to become such a key player in the social media world in such a short space of time.
Unlike her superstar contemporaries, the majority of whom are from the 2009 social media generation, Victoria only started her blog at the end of 2012 and though she uploaded her first YouTube video in May 2013, didn’t start using the platform consistently until 2014.
Her blog Inthefrow now gets more than 375,000 views a month and she has more than 500,000 subscribers on YouTube. Not to mention the 700,000+ people, who follow her on Instagram. “I threw myself into it,” Victoria recalls.
“I would say a lot of it [success] is down to consistency. I remember quite a few of the blogs that I loved back then, who started at the same time, weren’t quite as regular with their uploads.
“For two years, I uploaded every single day – if not more – on my blog. Looking back, that’s absolutely ridiculous. I don’t know how I did it.”
During this time, Victoria also had a full-time job as a lecturer and was studying for a PhD.
“There was about six to eight months when I went to bed at 3am and woke up at 7am to go to work.
“It was really, really bad and I was very down and super tired, but I always wanted to carry on because I knew if I dropped the ball I might lose it.”
Victoria isn’t a fan of complacency – something she attributes to her “working class” upbringing in Wigan – and looks to “better [her empire] constantly”. Indeed, in just under four years of blogging, she’s had five redesigns on her site.
“Design is my thing,” she says. “I loved textiles and art and the design element in how you put things together.
“When I started my blog, the thing I spent most time on – even more time than the posts – was the design.
“Again, I think it’s another reason why my blog grew; because back then a lot of people were interested in the content, but I wanted to have a beautiful blog that I was really proud of, plus great content.
“I would spend so much time coding that site. I would code it and code it until it looked exactly how I wanted it to, which was ahead of the game back then because you couldn’t buy blogger templates as easily as you can now.”
First she had a mint theme, then a purple design – to match her then famous purple locks, before outsourcing to professional blog and website designer pipdig for the last three updates.
“He’s brilliant,” she says. “I took inspiration from a load of my favourite magazines and luxury websites and started pulling things I liked together and put them all into Photoshop. I sent it to pipdig and he was like ‘ok, I’ll try and do this!’
“He says that my website is a juggernaut of code because there’s so much going on.” The reasons for her most recent redesign were twofold.
“About three months ago, I saw a lot of people upgrading their blogs and had a sense that everyone was thinking that they needed to be more editorial – which was amazing as it showed that everyone was pushing themselves harder,” Victoria says.
“But, at the same time, I would have so many people tweet me or direct message me saying ‘Oh, I’ve seen this blog – it’s very similar to yours’ or ‘it’s very inspired by yours’ and while it was lovely to see it inspiring people, there were other times when it would make me think ‘Ah, maybe it’s time to update it as things are getting very similar’.
The second reason that Victoria sought an update was to coincide with the new focus of her blog: luxury. Though she’s “always loved luxury fashion”, the movement from high street to haute couture wasn’t something that Victoria had always planned on. However, after seeing the blogosphere “becoming so saturated with high street hauls”, she decided there was a gap in the market for a luxury blog that she could successfully fill.
“I spoke to my management and said that I wanted to move more into luxury fashion, because apart from some of my favourite American bloggers and a few English bloggers, there weren’t many blogs doing it,” Victoria explains.
“I just thought this is the direction that I’d like to move in and I’ll see if everyone moves with me.
“Luckily they – especially my blog audience – have been amazing with the shift.” Victoria has an incredibly close relationship with her blog readers and looks at every single comment posted.
“I barely get any negativity on my blog, which I find so refreshing – it’s nice to be able to read the comments and not see something really horrible written about me,” she says. The same, however, cannot be said for YouTube.
“The blog reader is different from the YouTube commenter,” Victoria explains. “It’s mainly on my YouTube channel that I’ll get the really hideous comments. I think it’s because people feel more anonymous there.
“In terms of engaging with it, a lot of the time I try and delete comments that are antagonising me. But, if I’m having a bad day and I want to defend myself on a certain point, then I’ll defend myself – in the most normal, un-negative way I can. I feel that everyone has the right to defend themselves.”
Being at the top of the social media world means that you will be exposed to trolls; it’s sadly part of the online star package. Victoria understands this and tries to not let it affect her too much.
However, in recent months she’s seen an emergence of negativity coming from inside the community itself – and this is something she’s finding difficult to handle.
“It’s been bringing me down for the past six months,” Victoria says.
“I’ve seen a select group of bloggers consistently mocking other bloggers. You know, we have hate forums and tabloids for that. We don’t need bloggers to bring down other bloggers – let’s support each other.”
“It’s been really annoying me,” she continues, her voice rising.
“Every time I see another post about ‘do bloggers earn too much money?’ or ‘are they showing us that life is unrealistic?’, I think ‘why are you tarnishing the industry that we’re really trying to help build?’”
There have also been cases, Victoria continues, of comments directed specifically at her, which culminated in her writing a post on her blog called Girl on Girl Crime.
“I wrote the piece because I’d read a post where some particular words were aimed directly at me. I felt that it was extremely unfair given the fact that I try to be so open and friendly and supportive to everyone. So, yes, it upsets me when people take a nasty view towards me – especially in the professional industry we’re in.
“I felt that I wanted to say something about it; that women should be more supportive and respect each other. In an industry where everyone else is trying to bring us down, why – in this collective – are we helping with that?”
The post resonated with a huge number of bloggers and received over 280 comments.
“The engagement and the conversation around the blog post were amazing,” she says.
“I wanted it to be this really positive message. I knew that it would probably be quite popular and strike a lot of nerves with people, but I didn’t realise it would be that popular. It just showed me that a lot of other people are feeling the same way as me.”
Girl on Girl Crime was posted in a section called ‘Reflections’ on Inthefrow. This space on the site is dedicated – in its own words – to ‘something a little more personal’.
“They’re my most read posts,” Victoria says of the section.
“I really love writing them and can get a 2,000 word piece written out within an hour or so, because it’s just free-flowing real thoughts.” This personal, raw voice is something she has yet to share on YouTube, but she is thinking about it.
“I do want to bring that more personal, advisory, educational element into my YouTube because on my blog people engage so massively with those type of posts,” Victoria says.
“I just need to find a way to translate that into video because I think that a lot of people would really appreciate that.”
There are elements of her personal life that Victoria has shared on her channel, such as her relationship with her boyfriend Alex Harrison and their move from Manchester to London.
“People have engaged well with that and I don’t feel uncomfortable with it,” she says. In terms of boundaries, she doesn’t have firm ones laid out.
“I would probably feel differently about what I shared and didn’t share if I was a huge YouTuber with a phenomenal audience size,” she says.
“If I had millions and millions of followers, I’d be a lot more anxious about how they would take it if me and Alex broke up for instance – not that I think that’s going to happen!
“But because my audience is a bit older [Victoria’s main demographic is 18-35], I don’t think they would react in the same way to, say, large YouTubers.”
Victoria may not have a Diamond YouTube play button (for those with over 10 million subscribers), yet, but she has amassed a league of loyal followers and brands from across the globe have bookmarked her for collaborations. “I really enjoy working with brands on campaigns,” she says.
“It fills me with a lot of inspiration and I get excited about creating something unique.
“If a brand comes to me and asks to work on a campaign, I’ll go away and properly brainstorm, come up with ideas, make Pinterest boards and I’ll try and make that content better than anything else.
“But I only work with brands that I’m really into, which is why I turn down so many jobs.” Brand work can consist of longterm partnerships, multi-platform collaborations or sponsored posts, tweets and Instagrams.
The latter has come under fire in recent months – particularly in the US – when various social media stars have failed to disclose that certain images have been sponsored. The issue is prevalent, Victoria confirms, in the UK, too.
“I feel like there are a lot of agencies that aren’t pushing the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) guidelines like they should be,” Victoria says.
“Everyone in the UK should be disclosing properly. It really frustrates me when I see people on Instagram putting up pictures – holding something – and then it’s hashtag, hashtag, hashtag and there’s no #ad in there. Because they’re doing it, it tarnishes everyone else and takes away from the genuine validity of the channel.
“I now feel that there are a lot of eyes on particular people in the industry waiting for them to slip up or do something incorrectly by accident. It’s going to take someone getting a huge fine because one word will be wrong and then they’ll be the scapegoat, they’ll be the poster girl for disclaiming wrong and then everyone will be like ‘Oh, we’ll do it properly now!’
“If everyone just did it now, then maybe we wouldn’t have to have that – there wouldn’t be the need to be fining people because everyone would be trying their best to get it right. It annoys me, especially as I know a lot of people who have been doing it right.”
These include her large roster of social media friends, who – she says – are the highlight of her blogging journey.
“That’s the best thing about blogging for me – that I’ve met such incredible people. We’re all creative, love writing and fashion and beauty. We gel and have formed amazing friendships.”
Despite their ascent to social media fame, the group of friends, Victoria says, are all grounded. “Everyone’s very grateful and thankful for what they’re doing. No-one’s overconfident or think they’re ‘it’. All the girls I know don’t take anything for granted, which I think bonds us together well.” Victoria is particularly aware that to stay at the top, there’s no room for slacking.
“There hasn’t been one day since starting blogging where I’ve not done anything – whether that’s Instagramming, tweeting, snapchatting, creating ideas, editing, writing. I’ve literally not taken one day off.
“I think a lot of people don’t realise how much hard work it takes and what goes on behind the scenes.”
This is something that Victoria wants to make clear to the next generation of aspiring full-time bloggers.
“It really does take a lot of hard work,” she reiterates.
“I think you need to realise how big this market is now, and how saturated it is. If you have something that you want to bring to this game, it has to be unique. It has to be entirely ‘you’, it can’t be a manifestation of what someone else has done.
“If it’s not original then you’re not going to get the feedback and the engagement that you’re hoping for. “I think if you want to bring something new, amazing! And people have done it; people have started recently and shot straight to the top. So it can be done!”
As for Victoria, though the future’s looking bright, “there’s no room for complacency”. She’ll continue being the best she can be, building the Inthefrow audience – both on the blog and on YouTube, and inspiring a generation of women to release their inner #GirlBoss. She’s an unapologetic example of what it is to work hard and reap the rewards.
“It is a lot of pressure,” she says, thoughtfully. “But I think that’s pressure I build myself. I think people would be more than happy if I took the occasional break, but it all comes back to this complacency and not wanting to drop the ball.
“It’s so busy now, this market, and there’s so much noise that I do worry that if I take one day off I’ll be forgotten,” she concludes and falls into pensive silence.
She’s worrying in vain. Victoria Magrath is unforgettable.