Jay Miranda, a blogger I admire – Day 15 of the Blogtober Challenge

Without a doubt, the blogger who got me interested in writing Sophie’s Voice most is Jay Miranda.

She’s best known as a fashion blogger but she also writes the odd article about motherhood. and Hispano-American politics. When I started I thought that I would write about fashion most of the time – following on from the Vogue Busy Beauty posts that you can now find if you search through the ‘categories’ mechanism – and I liked her pared down layout and affordable style choices. She seemed to accommodate the practical considerations of her readership so ably – whilst injecting a little of the magic that makes fashion so attractive to me.

Even better to me, she’s a plus size blogger. I was very uncomfortable with the changes in my body for a long time. She is a woman who is a sexy, stylish and smart writer, businesswoman and mother. I hadn’t seen one of them before.

She was exceptionally generous to me in terms of giving up her time so that she could offer me advice and support. Lots of other celebrity bloggers are, in all honesty, horrible. I get it – I remember the world of fashion when the stylists and bloggers came to prominence. It’s already a hugely competitive environment and most of the successful candidates are very young women with little life experience struggling to make their way in an emerging market.. That’s basically the recipe for ‘Mean Girls On Crack’. A screenplay that someone should write, actually – you’re welcome.

Anyway, Jay was anything but. Even now she’s still the same warm person who used to post the details of the outfit she was wearing on her personal Facebook page for friends. Even better, she still uses the same budget when she styles clothes.

It’s hard for me to identify with the big trends now that I have so many other priorities in my life but that doesn’t mean that I have lost my passion for fashion. It’s like old people who still fancy attractive young people – I’m not dead. Maybe this is a hiatus but Jay shows me that I can still have a little bit of a trend. A detail here or there, maybe a pop of the prevailing colour…she makes the possibilities look endless. In truth, with my background and knowledge, I could probably figure it out for myself – and enjoy it – but I don’t have the time.

Now that her readership has grown, she’s started to cover a lot more political issues. It’s interesting to see that people are engaging with her on levels and in areas that are more my milieu. I’m quite proud that I had the confidence to make the crossover earlier. I always knew that my readers were intelligent, engaged people with a wide range of interests. I’m really happy that I had the confidence to change directions early on. I didn’t wait to see how my peers would react – I just went ahead. If anything, I’m a bit reticent when it comes to Outfit Of The Day or styling posts now. My specialism has changed. What I can see is that my readers have eclectic interests and hers do to. All over the world people aren’t so very different, are they?

In the process of setting up It Took Two – as it was in March 2014 – I found a inspiring role model who has shown me that evolving is something that is inevitable. For me, Jay Miranda is a very classy lady…and she’s hot. I look at her and I see a lot of what I want to be.

You can read her blog here – Jay Miranda