2017: Modepilot celebrates its 10th year

Today we celebrate a very special milestone anniversary: Modepilot turns 10! A decade in fashion blogging is a great deal. If we were a traditional German bakery it would almost count like a century. A child of the digital age, Modepilot might not be "brick and mortar", but we still feel like hanging a "Since 2007" sign under our logo in beautiful gold lettering. Especially when we consider that sadly, no German fashion blog that came into existence in 2007 survives today (more details in German here>>>).
So we can proudly call ourselves "Germany’s First Fashion Blog" or even "Germany's Oldest Fashion Blog". Anna Frost also celebrates 10 years of her pioneer spirit this year! Her original blog "Fashion Doll" ("Fashionpuppe" in German) has transformed into a shopping platform today, but she still blogs under fafine.de. Mary Scherpe of "Style in Berlin" ("Stil in Berlin") started in 2006, but her blog today focuses more on style and culinary musings from the German capital, with articles only in English. Sorry, Mary, we don't deny your pioneer spirit, but today it's all about celebrating German fashion blogging. This was the venture we set out to pursue.
Modepilot_10 Jahre_Jubilaeum_Geburtstag_2007
Our team celebrating our 10th anniversary! Barbara, me (Kathrin) and Isa (from left to right)

How it all began

Three traditional print journalists go online. Year 2007. Barbara, Sabine and Kathrin (me), met during Paris fashion week. All three of us were established fashion journalists in traditional media and were dreaming of creating the German version of something like style.com. Though a purely shopping-oriented platform today, style.com used to be the only legitimate option for those serious about following the latest and best from the fashion world with show reviews, entire collection images, designer exhibitions and the like. This is the content we craved to provide too, but in our own mother tongue. We found out about the possibility of creating a blog completely free of charge and started with an experiment: could we publish an article without employing an editing team (text editor, layout designer etc.)? Modepilot is born on 21.10.2007. Our first images from fashion shows were in stamp size format and our texts were surprisingly honest and unadorned for the fashion media scene back then. German-speaking fashion lovers could finally participate in our digital front row experience and follow fashion shows through the eyes of Modepilot (among them Isa too, who at the time studied fashion journalism and followed Modepilot on a daily basis). Above all, we had fun and fun was what made blog posts grow more and more frequent and our readership larger too. All of a sudden we had a daily count of 900 fashion readers. “Bild” selected us as one of the best fashion blogs worldwide.
Despite still having a day job, we put our heart and soul into Modepilot. We were committed and most importantly passionate. During the week we would spend our days working for magazines and publishers and our nights writing away our posts for our own website. Before bed, I would often laugh reading our readers' brilliant witty comments and engage with them. Modepilot was trasforming into a virtual forum where fashion lovers could find their tribe and have all sorts of discussions on crazy fashion trends, shopping addictions and street style craze.
Unfortunately the double workload of editorials and blogging took its toll on some of us. Sabine, our shopping queen and master of bad impulsive buys (What just happened to me there?), left the Modepilot cockpit in August 2013. The remaining team was eager to find a new promising member to fill the empty seat. But looking for the perfect co-pilot ended up taking a while. After a year and a half with reduced power, we finally found our newest member Isa in November 2014. Isa fit like a perfect pair of heels. With an education in fashion journalism and experience in print media the new fashion pilot has a critical eye, an ease with technology and a good sense of humour. Finally our team runs in full power again.

Modepilot today

With a full team of three, today we focus on increasing Modepilot's business volume. Which in other words means, how can we live off what we love doing without compromising our vision? The honest answer is, it's not so easy anymore. This is why we continue on dual runways.
Isa writes for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Glamour, Freundin and harpersbazaar.de. Barbara writes for the German Vogue, Sportswear International, The Brander and Lufthansa Exclusive, among others. As for me, for the past year I have been teaching at the Fresenius University and writing columns for Glamour and Cosmopolitan. Changing between gears does the trick! Writing for both print and online media keeps our muscles flexing and proves beneficial both ways. Long print media research projects help distill measurable results online, and vice versa. For our 10th anniversary, this is the direction we wish to take Modepilot: write well researched content with a soul. Why? Because we love fashion that works not only on Instagram but also every day.
What we wear in our jumping photo above? Isa (right) wear a dress by Roksanda (from avenue32.com) and pumps by Jimmy Choo. Barbara (left) wears a blouse by Zara, a midi skirt by Iris & Ink (from TheOutnet.com), shoes: Pierre Hardy (from Yoox.com). I (middle) wear a blouse and tweed jacket by Iris & Ink and a pair of velvet trousers by J Brand (everything from TheOutnet.com) and shoes by Jimmy Choo.
translation by Maria Delta
Photo Credit: Modepilot
Modepilot ist Deutschlands erster Modeblog. Mit seiner Gründung in 2007 war und ist er Vorreiter der unabhängigen Mode-Berichterstattung. Noch heute wird die Seite leidenschaftlich von Mitgründerin Kathrin Bierling geführt. Sie ist eine ausgebildete und erfahrene Journalistin, die zunächst bei der Financial Times lernte und arbeitete und dann einige Jahre bei der WirtschaftsWoche beschäftigt war, bevor sie die Seiten Harpersbazaar.de, Elle.de und InStyle.de verantwortete. An Modepilot liebt sie, dass sie die Seite immer wieder neu erfinden muss, um am Puls der Zeit zu bleiben. Worin sie und ihre Autoren sich stets treu bleiben: Den Leser ernst nehmen, nicht sich selbst.

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