The Maven of Style - Tommye Fitzpatrick

For a particularly talented fashion writer, the grand ascension to haute écriture might begin with a gig in San Francisco. After a few years, there'd likely be a lengthy stopover in New York or L.A. And then maybe, if the idealistic scheme truly ran its course, that writer might find herself in Paris.

For Fabsugar.com's new associate editor, Tommye Fitzpatrick '07, the pursuit began in a dorm room two years ago while preparing for biomedical engineering finals, a notably unlikely point of origin. Born as a creative distraction, Fitzpatrick's blog, Fashionologie, quickly became one of the Web's go-to sites for intelligent treatment of fashion.

"A lot of [fashion blogs] at the time were, 'I like pink and I'm super girly and use lots of exclamation points,'" Fitzpatrick says. "I wanted to dig a little deeper. Fashion is all, 'Is it art or is it superficial?' I wanted to see how people responded to something that was more serious."

After postponing her job search until March, the recent grad interviewed with Fabsugar and was nearly hired on the spot. "They knew my site from beforehand. so they knew what I was able to do," she says.

Now working in San Francisco's financial district, suffering through a 90-minute commute both ways, Fitzpatrick is still ironing out the kinks out of her time management. The paid work as first priority, the old hobby-blog often pushed aside. Though future plans aren't at the forefront of her mind-what with the wake of graduation and the dynamism of the new office-Paris seems to incessantly persist as the lingering dream.

"I'd have to refine my French a little more.. To say things like 'high heel' in French." Fitzpatrick pauses. "Actually, I know what that word is. I read Vogue Paris. It's more things like, 'Where's the bathroom?'"

-Daniel Riley