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| gala darling |
The countdown is on to tonight’s unveiling of Google’s new Boutiques.com fashion portal. After revealing the name and details of the site’s looks-matching technology, frockwriter thought we would hone in on one last, local, element: New York-based Kiwi Gala Darling. Frequently cited as one of the world’s most influential fashion/personal style bloggers - who calls her blog "The playgirl's guide to radical self love” and claims it boasts close to a million individual page views per month - Darling is one of a dozen fashion bloggers invited by Google to curate their own virtual fashion boutiques. Update 18/11: Now launched. Click (here) to check out her boutique and see who else is involved. Not bad for a magenta haired, tutu-rocking, tatt-emblazoned self-help dilettante, who launched into the blogosphere in December 2006 with a post entitled “Fashion help for recovering Goths”. Those in her native Wellington might know her better as Amy Paape. Reportedly a graduate of that city’s Chilton St James and Samuel Marsden Collegiate Schools, she moved to Melbourne in 2006, legally changed her name that year, then decamped to New York in 2008. Retail, as it happens, runs in the Paape family. Darling’s mother, Janet Paape, operates a Lower Hutt fashion boutique called She Designer Excitement, while her Porsche-racing uncle, Digby Paape, sells highend audio equipment at Bose Wellington.
