A New Little Black Shell: Circa 2014 nostalgia
2014 was a big year in the life of this writer. It’s when I was formally introduced to fashion blogs and when I started my first—Little Black Shell.
My blogging journey started from a fashion PR class led by a professor who I would later find out retired from teaching right after—the class I attended was her first and only class ever taught. Teaching was not for her, she told me once through a LinkedIn DM, yet this non-teacher teacher is the one that had the greatest impact on my career, or I could even dare say my life.
I can no longer remember her name, but I can perfectly recall the day my fashion PR teacher at Orange Coast College introduced us to blogs. Most people in class already knew the concept, and were quick to share their favorites— The Blonde Salad by Chiara Ferragni, Sincerely Jules, Song of Style by Aimee Song, and Wendy’s Lookbook. These too would become my inspiration, but on the day of that class, I was unaware of them all.
I had no clue what a “blog” was nor why it sounded like “blob.” I thought there had to be a more elegant word for such a publication of one’s own thoughts, recommendations, and personal style. Nevertheless, I wrote down all the blog names, and researched them that evening at home before beginning to write my very first blog post—an assignment due the following week for my fashion PR class.
My first blog post for the class assignment was surely not great, as was the first of my actual blog, but it didn’t matter. What mattered is it opened up a new world for me; one that, to this day, I hold as the most important part of my journey.
Little Black Shell was a blog that fused my love for fashion and the beach. It embodied the simple elegance of a little black dress, and embraced my beach-roots from having grown up in coastal Lima, and at the time, from living in Huntington Beach, California.
The beach always played an important part in my formation, and it still does. As a matter of fact, I’m writing this story from a small beach town in Spain that I’ve made my home for the summer. Mediterranean living is my preferred option nowadays, but the Pacific Ocean gave me my initiation. From summers at our beach house in Lima, riding bikes with my cousins, sneaking out in the middle of the night together to explore the nearby beaches, to wrestling the ferocious waves of the not-so-Pacific ocean as a mere 5 year old, I owe my love for the sea (and my great swimming abilities) to the wildness of my hometown’s waters. It is why, once my family immigrated to the United States, and we settled on Palm Desert, California—an actual desert with no natural bodies of water let alone an ocean—I set my dreams on moving to the OC.
When I turned 19, I made that dream a reality and moved to my favorite California beach town: Huntington Beach. HB had become my family’s go-to summer vacation spot over the years, and it became my fixation. You can imagine my excitement when I finally got the chance to live there after high school. I lived in Huntington Beach for 5 years, and it is also what inspired most of my early works for Little Black Shell. I owe the OC housewives, who made up the majority of the blogging scene in my area, a great deal of gratitude as they helped me get acquainted with the world of bloggers, introduced me to the LA blogging scene, and would later become my foundation to travel the actual world.
This new iteration of Little Black Shell, the Substack newsletter, is my ode to those early years of whimsy, where everything was far from perfect, yet I never felt more inspired nor alive.
I hope you enjoy my musings, now from a new area of the world, and chapter of my life. Over a decade later, yet still embracing the jet-setting, fashion-obsessed, and beach-loving sides of me that made Little Black Shell popular and a joy to both write and read to begin with.
Remember, never let anyone stop you from dreaming and never stop exploring.
Xx, Karen