The Rise of the Fashion Accounts

How Sabukaru, Welcome.jpeg, Boring Not Com, Perfectly Imperfect, and Daily Fashion News built themselves into influential curators.

There’s no such thing as fashion royalty on social media anymore. There used to be. We studied the taste of legacy magazines like gospel, at the frontline of culture. But that era is over. Now that information gatekeeping has all but collapsed, a new wave of digital trailblazers is rewriting the rules. They weren’t first, but they’re fast—and they’re wielding influence with terrifying precision.

User-focused and born from passion rather than the grind of a nine-to-five workplace, these accounts thrive in our new ecosystem, dominating algorithms and capturing attention.The five fashion accounts we’re about to introduce embody this shift. These accounts, published in English, Japanese, and Korean, are designed to suit their creators’ unique audiences. Presenting…

Tell me about yourself. What were you doing before launching your platform, and what inspired you to bring something new to the scene?

I have been working at VICE/VIRTUE, for adidas and several other brands, mainly on culture marketing and consulting. I also spent a long time—and still do—in qualitative research for brands to find out about trends and consumers. At the same time, I always had my own blog before Sabukaru, with a small community writing about subculture and youth culture.The inspiration behind Sabukaru definitely was the multiple deep layers of information that many people skip when consuming culture.To explain this in a more visual/direct way: 1) Sharing the very same image of Nigo in an IG post VS 2) Writing a long article about LAST ORGY [The magazine column name that Fujiwara Hiroshi, Nigo, and Jun Takahashi participated in], the different magazines it was released in, and all the people who were involved.I always wanted to create something that really digs deep, but most importantly, in an inclusive way. Not just ‘by those who know, for those who know’ but ‘by those who want to find out, for everyone’ to read, understand, and eventually like.

When did your platform experience its first significant breakthrough, and how did that shape your growth?What sets your platform apart from others in the same space?How did you transition from a creative outlet to a sustainable business? What kinds of partnerships or advertisements keep your platform running?Based on your platform’s perspective, what are the hot takes you’ve uncovered about your industry?What do you believe the future holds for media and social platforms in the fashion world?What is your platform’s ultimate mission, and how does it continue to guide your decisions?

I always remember when we posted the masks from the UNDERCOVER x Evangelion collection. I was in the showroom in front of the coats and masks for 25 minutes trying to find the best angle. The post has been floating around the entire internet, and I realized that we have unique access right now. Fast forward to now: the way we directly interview Japanese and global artists via our own format is something I see as our breakthrough—original content created by us. That’s the main big change we’ve gone through.I respect everyone out there, but at the same time, I truly believe we have a very unique factor that represents both the new consumer and existing consumers who have shifted from hype and product-only focus to culture-plus-X.I believe Sabukaru provides a platform for a new audience—one that defines itself by many different things, from manga to fashion, from niche music producers to small, under-the-radar artists and movements. It’s a new cultural space, and we are both noise-makers and culture-makers within it.We keep the platform as independent as possible. We’re very selective about who we work with and would rather say no to an activation that doesn’t fit. I don’t want us to become just another magazine full of product news, advertorials, and paid posts.Of course, we do operate commercially, but that requires a good fit and creative freedom for us. We have an agency on board—Bianco Bianco—that works with big fashion and lifestyle brands quite independently. This setup gives us the freedom to be more creative with the magazine and helps bridge the commercial and creative needs of our team and business.Hype is dead. Culture is the new currency. Southeast Asia is on the rise, with countries like Indonesia, Thailand, and many others slowly but steadily powering up. Chinese youth and creatives will have an even bigger impact and draw global attention in 2025.Everything and nothing. If you want to stay relevant, you need to be original. Everybody can download images and read information on Google.Inclusive information delivered with deep, detailed insight. We published our first print issue this year, bringing emerging and unique designers to the world through our showroom. We’ll keep hosting music events, raves, and parties worldwide. Doing this forever and ever.

What were you doing before launching your platform, and what inspired you to bring something new to the scene?When did your platform experience its first significant breakthrough, and how did that shape your growth?What sets your platform apart from others in the same space?How did you transition from a creative outlet to a sustainable business? What kinds of partnerships or advertisements keep your platform running?Based on your platform’s perspective, what are the hot takes you’ve uncovered about your industry?What do you believe the future holds for media and social platforms in the fashion world?What is your platform’s ultimate mission, and how does it continue to guide your decisions?

Before Welcome, I spent hours researching personal creative projects. I’ve always been interested in how culture evolves—and the rest of the team feels the same.We’re people driven to bring inspiration into people’s lives. Inspiring others shapes culture. It shapes people’s work, perspectives, and experiences. This has been the motivation behind every new initiative: to inspire.Quite quickly, the creative identity of Welcome resonated with people like Virgil Abloh and A$AP Mob. Our heroes championed us and helped shape the legitimacy of what we were doing. They signaled that our taste meant something.Legacy publications are trying to do the same things we do. But we do it bigger—and we reach more people. So now, they’re trying to find a new category to place us in. Instagram accounts think that reposting our curation, writing, and media is the same as what we do. But Welcome is the source. We live and die by our taste. Our energy and passion for this purpose are endless. That’s what sets us apart.Welcome’s transition was never from creative to business—it was from creative to bigger creative. When you impact the world at scale, everything else falls into place.Traditional magazines are scrambling to get their media out there. They still don’t see platforms like ours as “real” because we’re native to social media—but they want our help. And that’s no problem. We’re focused on our mission and, respectfully, reaching audiences at a scale often many times larger.In a world where our future is shaped by AI and automation, authenticity will become one of our most valuable assets. AI will find its place—but the human touch, our flaws, and individuality will matter more than ever.To birth culture. Our taste guides our decisions.

Tell us about yourselves. What were you doing before launching your platform, and what inspired you to bring something new to the scene?When did your platform experience its first significant breakthrough, and how did that shape your growth?What sets your platform apart from others in the same space?How did you transition from a creative outlet to a sustainable platform?What’s the most impactful or banger content your platform has ever created?What do you believe the future holds for media and social platforms in the fashion world?What’s your platform’s ultimate mission, and how does it continue to guide your decisions?

Before launching the platform, we were already working in the fashion industry. We’d seen how things operated behind the scenes, how people moved, how fake things could get. We wanted to create a space that was honest, raw, and unfiltered. Somewhere, we could say what others were thinking, but didn’t have the freedom to post.Day 1. Big industry insiders followed us immediately. Probably because what we were posting was raw, honest, and polarising. It struck a nerve; people could actually resonate with what we were saying. That kind of early validation pushed us to keep going and stay consistent.We don’t care about fitting in. We’re free to be ourselves on the account, within reason, of course. It’s not about harming anyone. It’s a diary, a space for honesty and expression. That’s what makes it different: no filters, no pretending.We’ve only just started working with brands, so it’s still new to us. Most of the time, we get approached by brands we like, which makes it feel organic. We’ve never chased partnerships just for money. Everything’s grown naturally so far.Any time we break news, like a creative director leaving or a new appointment, it usually goes viral. People love being in the know. That’s the kind of content that really lands.More people will start building their own online communities, little pockets where they can speak freely, share opinions, and get news that actually matters to them. It’s going to be less about mass appeal and more about niche authenticity.We want BORINGNOTCOM to be known worldwide for fashion, entertainment, and music. Every decision we make moves us closer to that. The product unboxings and Boring FM are only phase one of what they’ll eventually become. For now, we’re carving out something bigger than just posts; it’s a voice, a vision, and a future, not just for us but for our followers, too.

Tell me about yourself. What were you doing before launching your platform, and what inspired you to bring something new to the scene?When did your platform experience its first significant breakthrough, and how did that shape your growth?What sets your platform apart from others in the same space?How did you transition from a creative outlet to a sustainable business? What kinds of partnerships or advertisements keep your platform running?What’s the most impactful or banger content your platform has ever created?Based on your platform’s perspective, what are the hot takes you’ve uncovered about your industry?What do you believe the future holds for media and social platforms in the fashion world?What is your platform’s ultimate mission, and how does it continue to guide your decisions?

I was living in Somerville, Massachusetts, and working as a Software Engineer. I had this strong yearning to start a project that I could pour myself into and keep my mind far away from my day job, so when the newsletter renaissance began on Substack, I was ready to dive in. The idea was to democratize tastemaking and build a place where I could interview a bunch of different people and share an intimate look at what they're into. The format was (and still is) micro recommendations that offer insight into someone's day-to-day life, as a character portrait. Turns out that a lot of people also wanted this, and five years later, Perfectly Imperfect is my full-time job.The first breakthrough that gave us a unique perspective was our early coverage of the emerging Dimes Square scene (cringe to say that out loud, but it was exciting at the time). When I was still living in Boston, I was fascinated by the creative energy around projects like The Ion Pack, Drunken Canal, etc, and our interviews with niche internet personalities turned the newsletter into a yearbook of sorts.About a year later, we threw a big party celebrating the newsletter's 2 year anniversary, which is where The Dare performed one of his first NYC shows (the Girls live music video was filmed that night). The party was covered by the NYTimes, which went semi-viral on Twitter, and two days later, we interviewed Charli XCX. We got 20,000 new subscribers in just a few days and suddenly, a lot more people knew about Perfectly Imperfect.In 2024, I expanded on our initial recommendation interview concept by creating a platform for anyone to share recommendations. We called it PI.FYI and over 60,000 people use it to share and discover recommendations. It was built with love, and I like to think of it as the most positive place on the internet.As far as I know, we’re the only indie editorial platform to have a thriving online community built directly into it. I call Perfectly Imperfect a “Social Magazine” because we feature content from our users on the same exact newsletter that also features Lorde, John Cale, and The Rizzler.We have a premium tier that gets you access to exclusive features (such as premium themes for your profile, extra content, archive access, etc), and we also do brand partnerships. For example, we’re currently in the middle of a large collaboration with Hinge that features “Asks” on our social site, a branded guide, a bowling event, and a video, and projects like this will be a large part of turning PI into a sustainable business.A two-way tie between our interviews with Francis Ford Coppola and The Rizzler. We ran them in the same week—our oldest guest and our youngest.Expressing your love for something is more interesting and vulnerable than hating something. The industry and social media reward inflammatory content, and we have the direct opposite stance. We prefer to hear what you like and why, rather than listen to “hot takes” designed to stir the pot.I'm hoping that people return to human curation, small magazines with compelling voices, and learning from the people around you. Asking AI to make a playlist for you is becoming the dominant form of discovery amongst young people, and I believe we desperately need to bring back the human touch.To bring back how the internet used to feel—before AI slop, design homogenization, algorithmic curation, and psychopathic CEOs.

Tell me about yourself. What were you doing before launching your platform, and what inspired you to bring something new to the scene?When did your platform experience its first significant breakthrough, and how did that shape your growth?How did you transition from a creative outlet to a sustainable business? What kinds of partnerships or advertisements keep your platform running?What’s the most impactful or banger content your platform has ever created?Based on your platform’s perspective, what are the hot takes you’ve uncovered about your industry?What do you believe the future holds for media and social platforms in the fashion world?

My career background is in fashion merchandising. I worked at Ralph Lauren’s headquarters in New York, handling merchandising for the Asian region, and after returning to Korea, I was in charge of retail merchandising at Miu Miu.Some people refer to Daily Fashion as a media platform, but many others call us a community. I never actually planned to start this business. While working in the fashion industry, I wanted to study the field more consistently, so I began summarizing fashion news and sharing it via a newsletter with close acquaintances.That newsletter eventually gained thousands of readers, who started sharing a variety of opinions. Responding to their feedback, I transitioned from a messenger-based [KakaoTalk] format to an Instagram-based platform. Beyond just fashion news, I also began covering a range of trend-related information that fashion marketers needed to know, based on their requests. Additionally, followers began to act as members of the community, submitting information in the form of tips. As a result, this community grew to have not just a few editors but tens of thousands of editors, enabling the sharing of incredibly diverse and unrestricted information, transcending the boundaries of place and time. This #community spread like a snowball effect, reaching people around them, and I believe that played a significant role in its rapid growth.If you have a high-quality community, you can secure followers with strong consumer power. Moreover, if you possess valuable information, it can be quickly delivered to opinion leaders and decision-makers. By providing sharp insights into fashion, VICs (Very Important Customers) started following and participating, and many brands that cater to them joined as well. Additionally, I gather news-based information, current market trends, and consumer reactions to offer workshops for brands and businesses. Since I keep an eye on both global and domestic trends, I also provide market insights for foreign headquarters when they visit the Korean market.As Instagram evolved, selfies became a major part of the culture. The selfie trend began to generate countless variations. Toward the end of COVID, everyone started traveling abroad. Naturally, they were taking flights, right? Seizing this moment, I launched the airplane selfie challenge. Not only followers but also fashion icons and celebrities joined in.As someone who loves fashion, I do feel a bit disappointed that the fantasy and excitement around global star designers seem to have diminished in the industry. The changes and rumors surrounding creative directors in 2024-2025 appear to be creating drama in the fashion world, which had been relatively quiet for a while. Although the economy is not doing well, personally, I hope these changes will make the high-end brand market even hotter and create a new wave of energy.When I first started Daily Fashion News, there weren’t many social platforms delivering information in a conversational and lively tone. Now, most social accounts have similar layouts and tones. This reflects the growth of the Instagram-centered digital market, where trends have started to emerge as well.In the fast-paced digital market, overflowing with information and constantly changing, I believe that social platforms that can quickly read and adapt to trends while maintaining their own unique identity will emerge as the stronger players.