“A JC Shopping Habit”, like many “style” bloggers, regularly goes into her favorite store and does “dressing room reviews”. For those of you who don’t care (most of you) a “dressing room review” is when a blogger goes into the store, tries things on, takes pictures of it in the dressing room, and tells the world what they think of it. They may or may not buy the item, but either way the pictures of them wearing the item go up on their blog.

Well it seems that activity is frowned upon by some stores. “ajc” was recently informed by J. Crew that she is no longer allowed to take pictures of items until she has paid for them:

If you are wondering why I don’t have pictures, it is because the manager in my store asked me not to take them. She said she was asked by corporate J.Crew to tell me. She said clothes are property of J.Crew until I buy them. OK then, it is definitely not like those pictures are flattering.  I am not easily intimidated but I also don;t want to fight with them. So I am sorry if you are disappointed, but no more fitting room pictures. I am disappointed too. Not necessarily because of the pictures but in the way they handled it. It would be more classy to send me email through my blog. Oh well…

With more and more companies trying to work with bloggers by sending them items in exchange for brand pimping it certainly makes sense to me that they would want to prevent randoms from posting pics without any partnership involved. Obviously brands want to get their money’s worth with blogger marketing, and if any old person can post badly staged photos from a dressing room covered in discarded items, it lessens the value of the blogger partnerships that companies actually approve of.

Can companies really tell people they can’t take pictures of themselves for their own use on their own blogs? I can’t figure out from her wording if this blogger was singled out by J. Crew corporate or if this is a new company wide policy applying to all such photos and reviews. But since a lot of style bloggers participate in this type of review, I wonder how many other companies will follow the J. Crew lead and start clamping down on this?

Today in blogger entitlement, Roxy – self-appointed queen of Anthro-blogging since the departure of “The Antrhoholic” – is bummed out. What horrible catastrophe occurred that has her so upset? Well it seems twee clothing company Anthropologie forgot to send her an invitation to some party or something:

Last night Anthropologie hosted a blogger party in their NYC showroom. Normally this is the part where I talk about how excited I am to share photos and details…except this time around EA didn’t make the cut. Like some high school rumormill I found out about the party while checking my Instagram feed last night.

You know what’s even more “high school” than finding out over social media that you weren’t invited to the party? Whining on your blog that you weren’t invited to the party. But hey, she has a valid reason to be upset – I mean, don’t you people know who she is?

…I’m majorly bummed that at a time when more brands are reaching out to me to get involved with this community, the one brand I care about the most excluded EA from a blogger-targeting event.

In short, Roxy is a big deal on her blog, you guys. Yep,  nothing says maturity like getting on the internet and shaming companies for not recognizing your importance.

Am I the only one who finds this behavior sort of self-important and reeking of teenaged hurt feelings? Seriously this reminded me of high school, when someone would find out at school on Monday that they weren’t invited to so-and-so’s sleepover and then they would spend the next two days moaning about how they USED to be invited before reminding everyone they are a cheerleader and wrapping up with a loud “whatever, I don’t even care!”

Come on, bloggers. Some people have real problems. Get over yourselves.

Maegan, will blog for bags, recently traded pictures of herself for a few handbags. When her images were used in the handbag catalog Maegan says they had been altered to the point of making her unrecognizable:

The deal was that they would send us each a few bags to photograph with an outfit or two…We had to send these bags back to them but were offered two new Fall styles to keep free of charge in a few months time {regardless of them using our photos or not, we kept the bags…)

Since I already had a great working relationship with Brahmin, and it was simply a few outfit posts, I agreed and signed a contract handing over full rights to use and/or alter my photos in any way. Dumb.

Yes, after signing a contract saying they could alter her images in any way they wanted and getting her free handbags, Maegan was confused when she saw her images and thought her “face looked a little strange”. When she emailed the company “expecting a simple apology” over what she claims they did to her nose, she instead received a response stating they had not altered her face at all. She then proceeded to email them again, even including the above image, seemingly all but demanding they acknowledge their evil deception. Instead, she got this:

“I have spoken to our photographer and post production person who worked on this project and he has explained the light filter change to warm up the shots to make them read Fall, not to slenderize anything. We actually asked him to do this so that we could use the shots. I would be more than happy to walk you through over the phone if you want to provide me a number to call you.”

At this point Maegan decided to take to her blog and complain, because if she “can’t stand up for myself when my face has been altered to fit some sort of societal standard and when my likeness and image, which are a part of my blog and brand have been changed drastically and compromised and then I’m lied to and told that it wasn’t retouched and that I don’t know what my own face looks like — then I am sending a message that I am okay with this kind of photo altering and I am indeed NOT OKAY WITH IT”.

This is all very Norma Rae of Maegan, and probably not very nice of Brahmin. But Maegan seems to forget that she signed a contract – she gave away her right to be outraged when she signed on the line in exchange for a couple of handbags. I mean hey, sorry, sucks for you, but maybe next time read what you’re signing and then think about how much your ‘brand’ is really worth to you.

Annie, a “really petite” blogger, is getting some side eye in the petite style blogging world. It seems Annie concocted a story around her outfit – a story some had heard before.

An outfit posted by “Extra Petite” blogger Jean on September 9 featured a jacket that, according to Jean, her mom bought for her “five years ago from the Banana Republic outlet”.  Well yesterday Annie posted an outfit to her Instagram, and when asked where she got the coat, claimed:

Unfortunately there was a public internet trail showing Annie actually bought the coat on ebay. When people began to call her out on her obvious lie, providing proof that she did, in fact, not receive the coat from her mother but actually purchased it online days before, the internet scrubbing began in earnest.

But not only is Annie scrubbing her own internets – she is allegedly asking others to delete their own comments and tweets in order to completely erase any evidence:

Claims that she is “copying” Jean aside, Annie’s actions are so ridiculous I don’t even know where to begin. First of all it’s stupid to make up some story about a piece of clothing, especially when your ebay history is public. Second, it’s sort of sketchy to ask people to help you kick dust over your lies when you get caught. 

Third, I don’t know why anyone is surprised at this. I’m pretty sure style bloggers aren’t all 100% up front 100% of the time about where their items come from, for various reasons ranging from not wanting other bloggers to have the item to embarrassment at purchasing something from ebay. The only difference seems to be that those bloggers are smart enough to keep their purchase histories private, and probably don’t go around asking other people to delete their tweets to help them cover their tracks.

Rumors have been trickling in during Fashion Week that Emily of Cupcakes and Cashmere is baking a little uterus cupcake. I haven’t really noticed any tummy pop, but maybe that’s because the last few outfit images of her don’t really provide a clear view of any possible fupa.

Then again, she did just get married. Maybe she’s just grown herself a little wife waist since last Fashion Week? I hope the stories aren’t true, if only because I don’t want to live in a world where Emily Cupcakes becomes even more cliche and boring by doing the usual blogger get married, start baby blog routine.

Rich Tong, former fashion something at tumblr, is apparently now the “founder of Fohr Card”. On his tumblr he has invited fashion bloggers to request participation rights in his latest venture:

Fohr Card – for those of you with fashion blogs who’d like to test out what i’m working on, shoot me an email: rich@fohrcard.com

The Fohr Card site offers no insight into what exactly this new project is, but theories include a “bloglovin” type site, an “about.me” type site, or a “pinterest” for fashion bloggers. Whatever it is, I’m sure he hopes to do a better job with this than he did running the fashion pr for tumblr.