Published March 25, 2011

Hola lovers,
You might not know me, but you should (if you are a foreign national visiting the country; I forgive you, but if you are a native Icelander you have no excuse)
I am the most prominent fashion blogger Iceland has reared, and I blog mainly in Icelandic (which is the only plausible reason why you tourists might not have heard of me). And I assure you, being Iceland’s leading fashion blogger is no small feat, as Iceland—having among the highest literacy rates in the world and a genetic flair for fashion—probably also has the most fashion bloggers per capita in the world.
I blog on Iceland’s most fashionable website, www.tiskublogg.blogspot.com, and when the Grapevine asked me to write a piece for its DesignMarch issue I immediately agreed.
As you probably already know if you are reading this, Iceland is the most creative country in the world. We are renowned for our creative musicians, our creative artists, our creative naming of volcanoes and our creative banking. And we Icelandic fashion bloggers (being Icelandic) are a creative lot as well, though we choose to channel our creativity through unconventional channels. Unconventional, because we don’t create anything as mundane as tangible objects. Our creations are abstract and transcendent, rather than substantive, and therefore everlasting.
We write about things we want to buy and demonstrate in a graphic manner how we would use them in creative ways together with other things that we want to buy. This could include suggesting a man’s shirt be worn a woman’s skirt, using faux-bacon strips as a bandanna, or perhaps using suspenders as a brassiere.
The most fashionable version of this form of creativity is undoubtedly posting pictures of things that you really want to buy, but will probably never to be able to afford in your life, and informing your readers how you would use the thing with other things you desperately want but will never afford.
Because it is the fashion blogger’s Holy Grail to covet things that are simultaneously attainable (because they are for sale) and unattainable (because no ordinary person can afford them) and therefore ethereal.
This form of creativity popular with fashion bloggers around the world is what I call creative consumerism, and it will be the next big thing.
xoxo
-h
Photo taken from the author’s blog.