Polyvore. If you’ve ever spent a lot of time on Pinterest or Tumblr, you’ve probably seen content from Polyvore—whether you knew it or not.
It was a social site where users could create “sets,” which were essentially fashion-focused collages. Fashion, beauty, and home items that were used in these sets would have links to other sites where the items were being sold. Within the site, users had all of the typical features of social media, such as liking, comments, messaging, groups, and sharing to other sites like Pinterest and Tumblr.
It was very accessible, and anyone who wanted to could easily learn the tools that the set designer provided users. People could easily put in images that had already been added to the site or find their own and “clip” them to Polyvore, where they and others could use these new images.
I began creating my own Polyvore sets shortly after lurking on the website. They looked terrible at first; but I used it consistently, and over months and months, my sets grew in complexity, creativity, and visual style. Equally rewarding to that was how I was inspired by and interacted with other people on the site.
For years, I was on the website practically every day. I joined lots of groups and constantly created sets for contests in those groups.
But battle groups were my true bread and butter. These were groups where members would compete in challenges over time, usually using the same character as the centerpiece of their sets, and would earn points by meeting certain criteria and for their creation getting a good ranking in comparison to the others.
I would make elaborate sets with outfits and aesthetic images for pre-existing characters or ones that I had created myself. I would write stories about these characters in the set description.
Polyvore was uniquely important to me because it fostered my love for writing more than anything else had before. It gave me prompts for writing in order to meet contest criteria that gave ideas and direction. I knew that some people were reading what I liked and even commenting positive things about my little stories. But maybe even more importantly, there was no pressure. It almost didn’t matter what I wrote. What mattered was that I wrote something, and that kept me practicing and practicing. When I started writing on Polyvore, most of what I wrote was truly terrible, but by the time I created my last story on Polyvore, I knew that I had gotten so much better.
Today, sites like Urstyle, Fashmates, and Shoplook try to fill the void that Polyvore left, but none of them can do it perfectly. No website has the same sense of community that Polyvore had. With the very sudden shutdown of Polyvore, users that had been friends for years were left with no way to contact each other. There was no consensus for a site for everyone to go to as all of the alternatives were originally lacking some of the best technical features that Polyvore had. It was a natural stopping point for users like me who had started to grow out of their obsession with the site.
But, I wasn’t done with creating sets completely. Now, I use URSTYLE. I enjoy being able to make sets again and I have been able to connect with some of the people that were on Polyvore alongside me. The visual style and user interface of the website is nearly identical to Polyvore after years of development.
I don’t use it every day, and, in fact, I will sometimes go months without even touching it. But it is nice to have the occasional creative outlet. I still find myself missing Polyvore. I am nostalgic for the community I used to have and the way I was able to unabashedly practice writing.
Even with all of its drawbacks and my preference for the old Polyvore, URSTYLE has helped me with my writing. Through it, I have found a new community (partially comprised of past Polyvore users), and that group of people helped motivate me to finish my National Novel Writing Month draft this past November.
Polyvore may no longer exist, but without it, I would not be half the writer or creative I am today.
Want to keep up with HCBU? Make sure to like us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram, check out our Pinterest board, and read our latest Tweets!