Welcome to the NEW theStyleJungle! I can’t believe it’s the third time in my life I’m typing this phrase already.
Our blog started as a small fashion news generator on Livejournal – platform, quite popular among bloggers of the time when creating a self-hosted website was something far beyond our wildest dreams. Crazy fashion lover, I did everything I could to stay atop the latest news from the industry. I will never forget how our blog became the first source in Russia to announce that Donatella Versace is bringing back Versus. Wow, all the reposts, backlinks and traffic numbers in the next few days totally blew me away! That’s when we realised that we can probably take our passion to a whole new level.
Our first self-hosted blog was so different from anything we did before! Both working in glossy magazines at that time, we were fed up with official news, press-releases and working 24/7 to be the first in sharing the news. So we turned theStyleJungle into our cosy beautiful space to share what we really felt, to share our thoughts, emotions and hopes with our followers in no rush and with no time limits.
Somewhere at this stage we have also started our YouTube channel. Waaaaay before it became a thing, we were already filming my outfits, Fashion Weeks’ backstages and room tours at the hotels we were staying at.
Once again, the transition couldn’t have happened at a better time – our following and recognition grew rapidly, we started to travel a lot, filming and taking photos for Tourism boards, hotels and collaborating with amazing brands from all over the world.
It was during one of our visits to Riga Fashion Week, when we pronounced ‘Welcome to the new theStyleJungle’ for the second time, revealing the new design of the same old but truly loved by both of us blog. I felt on cloud nine that day. Probably gorgeous, all glass and steel media lounge of Riga Fashion Week added to that overwhelming feeling of happiness and doing things right. That was in March, 2016. And that was the layout you all know and that remained on our blog up until now.
Three years later and I can admit that: another ‘welcome’ was already well overdue! Not only did we stop enjoying what we saw on our website at some stage but the backend started to feel outdated and limiting our ideas. You should have noticed lack of updates in the last year or so. Well, demotivation IS a thing! It was definitely time to give green light for the next update!
These past two months we worked so hard to improve and update our baby, our wonderful project that grew from a small experiment to something we are so proud of and something that is now being noticed by so many amazing companies and awards.
And I can’t be more proud to say that it was finally the first time we did everything ourselves. No web-designers, no web-developers were invloved. Could they have done it better or faster? Most probably, yes. Will we be equally proud of the result and inspired to create more and more? Never on Earth. Because now we know every single corner, every single comma and media file of our blog, we created it, we implemented it and we will do everything we can to make it shine.
So, once again: welcome to the NEW theStyleJungle!
1 December, 2018 marks not only the day when we launch new design but also the day of the new theStyleJungle content-wise. These past years we were growing professionally, we were improving our writing skills, our photography, our coding knowledge, we taught ourselves how to juggle previously unknown sides of having own business. And we want to finally bring all these new skills to our project. Time to leave well-trodden path and get back to what we have always enjoyed doing the most, and that is experimenting and finding the ways to do something no one around is doing yet.
So now on we will be continuously implementing new formats and new approach to our blog posts. We want to make them more ‘editorial’, more technically advanced, more… do I dare to say that? PROFESSIONAL. Don’t get me wrong, everything that will ever appear on theStyleJungle, will still be based on our personal experience and all the opinions will remain honest and not affected by anyone or anything. But we want to give ourselves more freedom in terms of HOW and WHAT ABOUT to write.
For example, I plan to focus more on beauty posts in the nearest future. I’m passionate about it, I love discovering new brands, experimenting and going beyond press-releases to discover what these textures and ingredients are really about. Working as beauty editor in a mag back in Russia is definitely a highlight of my journalism career for me and I really miss writing beauty texts.
theStyleJungle was always changing and evaluating together with our interests. It was born as fashion blog, turned into a travel blog but it had never yet been a beauty blog and the lack of that topic was holding me back for far too long. Not any more! As I said, only through experiments and trying something new you can create something really worthy, something you would truly love and enjoy doing, something inspiring for yourself and, hopefully, for others.
By no chance does it mean we are leaving our ‘travel’ part behind. It will always be our #1 focus but you might have noticed that ‘& lifestyle’ add-on to our traditional ‘Inspiring travel blog’ description in logo. So here is to the new beginnings! I hope, you’ll love what we’re about to do here!
I’m full of plans and ideas and can’t wait to hear your opinion. Please, feel free to share it on our Facebook page and Instagrams (@thestylejungle and @alexspodyneiko). You attention and feedback was always very important for us and honestly, we would’ve never gotten to the point we are now without you, our readers, our friends and supporters.
