We first found Corrie when she wrote a post mentioning Copious, and since then we’ve been huge fans of her bold personality and bolder style. As superfans of her blog, it was only slightly creepy when we recognized Corrie at Lucky Magazine’s Fashion and Beauty Blogger conference by the pair of shoes she was wearing. Imagine looking over to your right and thinking, “Oh, those neon pumps look familiar…is that…CORRIE!” Read about Corrie’s long-lost neon pink bell bottoms, her urban wanderings, and her life as a style blogger with a vegan focus.

Introduce Yourself! What’s your name, where do you live, and what do you do? 

I’m Corrie and I blog over at Brooklyn Bliss, a personal style blog with a vegan lifestyle focus.  I live in Brooklyn, NY and by day work as an executive at an electronics distribution company.  

How would you describe your personal style?

It’s kind of hard to pinpoint it myself, but I’d say my style seems to bridge edgy and classic.  I really love things with studs and (faux) leather, but on classic shapes like pencil skirts and trench coats.  My absolute, favorite pattern is leopard so I love the challenge of incorporating it into business appropriate looks. As far as accessories and overall styling goes, I really tend to go minimalistic, so I guess you can describe my style as minimal as well.

Do you have any fashion regrets? Or vice versa, things you’ll never stop wearing?

I often look through old photos on my blog and think “Why would I wear that and better yet why would I post it on the internet?!”  You can never really learn what your true style is without trying styles you like and seeing if it works for you, so a certain amount of failure is bound to happen. 

As far as regrets go, I had this amazing pair of vintage neon pink, high waisted super flared bell bottoms in college that to this day I regret getting rid of.  They fit so perfectly, were so unique, and were brand new with the tags still on when I found them!  A piece of 70’s history!  

That brings me to my second fashion regret; I got rid of them shortly after I started my first office job.  While trying to fit what I thought corporate America requires to succeed, I actually wound up losing my sense of style all together and went through a really sad phase where I no longer knew how to dress myself, and where everything I wore was blah and boring.  I quite literally had zero personality and lost my sense of self in the process.  The lesson I learned from all of that was don’t ever give up anything you love, and if it doesn’t fit your current way of life, figure out a way to make room for it.  I know now if I still had those neon pink bells I could still style them and make them work appropriate.  I really, really wish I never gave them away.

What inspires you?

I’m very inspired by motivated people and people who take risks and chances.  I love hearing success stories of people with big dreams and what they did to make it happen.  Whether it be an entrepreneur, athlete, activist, or whatever, people who are motivated to do what they are passionate about and what they feel is right is the most inspirational thing I can think of.

Tell me about Brooklyn Bliss. How did you get started? What’s your ultimate goal for your blog?

It actually all comes back to my fashion “regrets”.  I initially started Brooklyn Bliss as an online outfit journal specifically to chronicle myself re-finding my style.  I had a very strong sense of style all through middle school to college.  It goes without saying, you need to be pretty confident to wear neon pink bell bottoms.  During my zero personality phase right after college, I was 100% aware of this and it really bothered me.  I was pretty inspired by what personal style bloggers I enjoyed following were doing, and decided to try it myself and set up a blog the summer of 2010.  Putting photos of yourself on the internet really makes you conscious of your choice in how you chose to present yourself to the world, and I’m happy to say I think my little experiment accomplished what I was hoping it would.

I’ve also been a long time vegan, and my choices in what I wear are largely driven by that.  Most non-vegans assume that when you’re a vegan it’s just about what you chose not to eat, but in reality it affects every single product you use, including clothing and accessories.  Vegans don’t wear any leather, wool, fur, feathers, or any other animal derived materials.  So as a result on my blog all my outfits are don’t feature any of these materials.  I had started a feature I called “Vegan Versions” showing my most recent vegan finds that are similar to current designer trends, and right after starting that series I started to generate a pretty solid vegan following, though when I had originally started the blog, that wasn’t my intent. I tend to be somewhat silent about my veganism and don’t talk about it in day to day life unless someone asks me about it.  I’ve always felt what you eat and your lifestyle is a very personal choice.  I feel you can make more of an impact leading by example than by preaching what you believe in.

What I’ve found is despite the vegan specific focus on my blog, that my audience has grown to about a 50/50 vegan to non-vegan split.  This excites me because I have the opportunity to de-mystify veganism to the general public and show not all vegans look like a bunch of Woodstock hippy throwbacks.  Some of us are pretty damn fashionable!  My favorite part about my blog now is getting emails and tweets from non-vegan readers who are proud to tell me they just bought their first pair of vegan shoes, a faux leather skirt or have decided to try Meatless Mondays, and they wouldn’t have thought to try any of those things had they not encountered my site.  That to me makes all the time I put into it worthwhile.

My ultimate goal for the blog moving forward is not only exposing my readers to chic vegan products, but also exposing the brands I partner with to the vegan audience.  There are so many clothing and accessory brands out there that have great, coincidentally vegan products that our community is unaware of.  Copious is a great example of this.  It’s a great resource for new vegans to purge all their leather and wool items from their wardrobe and replace them with vegan versions! Considering the makeup of my audience, I’d love Brooklyn Bliss to be  the platform to educate all on being fashionable and vegan.

What are you listening to right now?

In general my musical tastes are really broad. I listen to pretty much everything except for country.  I’m currently listening to a lot of classical and love listening to the classical stations on Pandora.  The more recent, contemporary stuff I’m listening to are Florence the Machine, Fiona Apple and Queens of the Stone Age.

Tell me about your ideal day. What do you do, where do you go, who are you with?

This question instantly brings me back to a quick weekend trip I took with my husband Jim over the summer to Boston.  We’d both never been there, and spent the entire time exploring the city with no specific plan or agenda and we had the most incredible time.  We do the same exact thing here in NYC on weekends.  The city is so big even though I grew up in the area, there are still some parts I’ve never been to or that Jim hasn’t so we try to make it a point to pick a neighborhood and just wander around.  Usually wandering around includes stopping into a museum or gallery along the way (we are both big art buffs and met while attending art school).   Aimless exploration of urban landscapes with Jim I suppose would be my answer to that.

Anything I should have asked that I didn’t? Tell me one more thing I should know. 

A fun thing I don’t think most my readers know about me is I used to be an cellist… in a post-punk band.  Electric cellist that is.  My work is actually on iTunes.  

What are you loving on Copious right now?