This is not a BlogHer recap post

Even though I spent three days at BlogHer, I don't really have a BlogHer recap. For one thing, I actually spent very little time at the actual panels--two on Friday, and none on Saturday.

Nothing against the panels, really, it's just that it's my fifth blogging conference, and after a while, panels start to repeat themselves. And seem more trouble than they're worth.

One of the two panels I attended was Susan Wagner's Style Bloggers panel (if you missed the panel, there's a good write up here on Fashionista) and I left the panel with more questions than I'd come in with. Which is probably good, because it means the subject was much bigger than its time slot.

It's also good because it means the panel made me think.

In my last life, I spent a lot of time going to academic conferences, and I got used to the way they run panels. It's a big deal to get on an academic panel, and while it helps to be a big name in your field, you still really have to make a point. And it should be a good point--preferably something groundbreaking or paradigm shifting or as Faux Fuschia likes to say, visionary. You get 20 minutes to make your point. Then, if you're lucky, people ask questions.

There are fewer points and many more questions at BlogHer panels, which means the quality of the panel depends on the quality of the questions, which may explain why blackbird of Say La Vee and I escaped and went shopping at the Hermes store. Where I bought a scarf and two bracelets, but this is not a haul post.

No, this is a series of questions about fashion and style blogging.

(BTW, were you acquainted with "haul posts" and "haul videos?" The term was getting slung around a lot at the style panel, but I hadn't realized it had reached such a saturation level that no one felt the need to define it. So click on the links, if you're not aware of the phenomenon.)

Now that BlogHer is less about mommyblogging being a radical act and more about women-owned business blogging (because let's face it; monetizing your blog in any way is running a business) I'd really like to see some other people at blogging conferences. Because we are not all mommybloggers. Not even those of us who have kids.

I'd really like to see more style bloggers. I saw Susan Wagner of Friday Playdate and Kalisah of I'll Be the one in Heels. I met some new (to me) style bloggers, like the gorgeous Amber of Brown Bombshell Beauty, and Treacle of The Lingerie Addict, and Tracey of FashionForward40, who was everything good: smart, funny, curvy, and stylish.

Tracey in her wrap dress and double strand of faux gray
South-Sea-style pearls--me in Lilly

But seriously, the personal blog has been around for years. The monetized brand-crazy mommyblog has too. So enough already about privacy, the internet, and our kids. What about privacy, the internet, and What I Wore Today? 

And what's a design panel when nobody's addressing something that I've been wondering about for a while: why, with our eyes for design being so finely honed, do bloggers like Faux Fuchsia, LPC of A Midlife of Privilege, Alexis of J. Crew Aficionada and I still use the Blogger minima templates? Why don't style bloggers feel the same need to use huge splashy headers and custom-designed blogs?

How about a panel on fashion photography--specifically, on photographing yourself for your blog?

How about a panel on being an old broad? What about issues of aging in the blogosphere? After all, simply by virtue of being 53 years old, I'm way outside of the 35-year-old white, suburban mother-of-two stereotype. Even though I'm white and suburban and a mother of two, I feel distinctly ... other.

What fashion/style/design issues would you like to see covered at a blogging conference?