PS Q&A: How Did The Perennial Style Begin?

Happy Monday friends! We always appreciate all of the sweet emails we receive from you guys, so we decided we would start a new series to answer all of your questions. To kick of the series, we figured we would start with the question we receive weekly: How did The Perennial Style begin? 

 

To be completely honest, when we started The Perennial Style three years ago we knew NOTHING about blogging. Blair had a couple friends with blogs in Dallas (hey, Blue Mountain Belle!) and followed a few online, so she was familiar with the concept. Ellen, on the other hand, had always dreamed of working in the fashion industry – but unable to find that dream career in Dallas, settled into a corporate healthcare job – clearly lacking creativity. Janie was half-way through SMU, so she had a flexible schedule and was on board with an extracurricular hobby.

 

Since Blair had gotten engaged that summer immediately after signing her apartment lease, she found a sublease and moved into Ellen’s one-bedroom apartment for a few months. In between the constant together time and wedding planning (which led to a beautiful weekend – see here!), we decided we needed a hobby – and in about 15 minutes, Blair came up with The Perennial Style.

 

Over the years, we’ve met tons of girls who spend weeks trying to decide how to start a blog or what to name it, etc, so a 15-minute launch doesn’t sound that monumental – BUT I think this is what has made our blog so special to us. For the first six months of the blog, we kept it a total secret. Considering it was our creative outlet and sister hobby, we didn’t want to blast it out to the world.. Which looking back that seems incredibly silly, since we share every little detail of our lives now!

 

What makes the blog so special to us is just seeing it grow, since it’s something we started on our own. We had no idea that it was possible to monetize a blog or work with brands or affiliate programs. From the beginning, we had a trial and error method to make this site work and learned everything on our own. We’ve never used professional photographers, but rather trade off snapping pictures on our Nikons or set up the tripod for those days we travel solo. Ellen handles all of the web design herself, so a yearly site makeover has seemed to be a trend since we began. Overall, we are a team of three who loves to learn and plans to keep learning and improving.

 

Safe to say it has come a long way from the launch, but everyday brings a new challenge and that’s what keeps it so exciting! We could’ve never dreamed of the experiences we’ve had since starting the blog, and we are excited to see what the future holds. To this day, seeing that our sister hobby has turned into a career is still so incredibly humbling – but the reason I think that has happened is because we truly do what we love and really enjoy sharing our passions with each of you!