Lucky Magazine’s First Fashion & Beauty Blogger Conference

I was fortunate enough to attend Lucky Magazine‘s first ever Fashion & Beauty Blogger conference (FABB…love that acronym!) on Tuesday at the beautiful Apella along the East River in New York City. This conference was the perfect marriage of Social Media Week, happening now in New York City, and Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, which starts today.

Photo from luckymagazine.com

Basically, it was amazing. Amazing…and intimidating. I spent the day with over 150 of the industry’s most influential bloggers and professionals, which was nothing short of inspirational, and a bit nerve-wracking. We chatted, ate delicious food catered by Tom Colicchio‘s Riverpark, listened to the speakers on four different panels ranging from how to approach brands to engaging audiences and maintaining interest to incorporating different platforms into your blogging strategy, and logged away valuable nuggets of information on how to improve our blogs and brands. Special guests included Tory Burch, CEO, Tory Burch, and Jenna Lyons, President and Executive Creative Officer, J. Crew. Joan Rivers provided lunch-time entertainment and threw in some advice, but not without some laughs. The day ended with a wonderful cocktail reception and some music from Patricia Ahn.

There were also three little suites set up around Apella. Land’s End, Converse, and Revlon all had fun things and giveaways throughout the day.

Speaking of giveaways, the gift bag we received on the way out is nothing short of incredible. I will definitely be writing about a few of the products I received in the next few weeks. I’m still trying to go through it all!

While I’m still trying to wrap my brain around everything I learned, here are some things I took away immediately. Some of these themes resonated throughout each panel and sort of became underlying themes of the conference:

1. “Determine your worth as a blogger.” -Kerry Diamond, Vice President of Communications for Lancôme USA. Kerry was on the first panel and made drove this home with an anecdote. Jenna Lyons said something similar, “don’t sell yourself short.” Have faith in your abilities and capabilities!
2. “Go through any door.” -Joan Rivers. Don’t say no. Rich Tong, Fashion Director of Tumblr, also said, “try anything and everything.”
3. “Treat bloggers like [magazine] editors.” -David Duplantis, SVP, Global Web and Digital Media at Coach. Tory Burch said something similar. To me, this is the difference between personal style bloggers and writers who blog (thanks to my lovely friend, and partner in crime, Meghan for that distinction).
4. “Always leave the door a bit open.” -Joan Rivers. You never know who you’re going to meet and how influential they will become.
5. “Don’t be afraid of someone who scares you.” -Jenna Lyons. Too often, intimidation can lead to fear. Instead, work harder to be better.

I could honestly go on and on and on about everything I learned that day, but I don’t think there’s enough time in a day to write it all down. It was announced that Lucky is planning another conference in September- 2 days, this time- and I can’t wait to be there!

As wonderful and valuable as the day was, I think there are a few kinks that can be worked out for the September conference. I feel that the length of the day was a little bit too long, and by the time the cocktail reception came along, I was ready to head home and get in my PJs and catch up on Glee. I think the day could have ended an hour or two earlier, still leaving us a solid hour or two to network and meet each other, and still get home before 9 pm. Also, I wish the caterer would label the cookie tray and separate the different kinds. As someone who has a moderately severe tree nut allergy, I wasn’t able to enjoy any of them because the cookies were all cross contaminated and I had no idea which kinds were which!

I managed to take a few pictures during the day, and some are below.

Brandon Holley, Lucky Magazine’s fabulous Editor in Chief, opening the conference.

Me and Meghan.

Tory Burch!

Me and Erika Bearman, Vice President of Communications at Oscar de la Renta. A wonderfully charming, sweet and well spoken lady!

The First 10,000 People Are Everything panel.

Revlon had a cupcake display to match their new eye shadow palettes. I DIE.

Photographers were taking professional pictures of us. Here’s one of mine!

Click here to see all of the photos I took, and click here to see the ones Guest of a Guest snapped as well (I’m in picture #15 in the GofaG photos)! For video, you can see Social Media Week‘s coverage (which I highly suggest you do!). All four panels, plus special discussions, are there!