Name: Sydney Sadick
Year: Junior
Hometown: New York, NY
Major: Journalism & Mass Communication
Campus Involvement: Alpha Epsilon Phi, Style Correspondent for GWTV, and running her own fashion blog, Style Solutions!
So you just did an interview with Vanderpump Rules star Katie Maloney. How did you reach out to her?
Actually, they reached out to me this time. When I first started my blog, it was a lot of me pushing myself onto PR firms and trying to get them to want to talk to me, because my age is something that I don’t really expose and reveal to people very often. So I just kind of don’t talk about it. But now that I’ve been doing it for a couple of years, this was an example of someone who came to me.
How did your blog, Style Solutions, get started?
I took journalism courses at Harvard University’s summer program and I was going into my junior year of high school, so I was 16 or 17, and one of my professors was like, “If you want to become successful in media or journalism, you should really just start a blog,” because this is when no one was really doing it and there was no such thing as a professional blogger. So, I did it, and I decided to do it on fashion…because that’s what I knew about most and it was something I loved. At that point, I was just writing about products…and then when I left Harvard, I decided to turn it from a hobby into something I wanted to do five days a week. So I started profiling my outfits, and my little brother—who is 11—has been taking my pictures since he was 8 years old. And then I wanted to start incorporating something people didn’t really do, which was interviewing. You can go on Huffington Post or People or any of the official news sources and read interviews, but no one who was a personal, one-woman show, was really doing that. So, I wanted to do that and that’s how it kind of started.
Have you had a most memorable interview or place you’ve gone?
One of my most memorable moments was my first time at Fashion Week. It was at the Milly show, and I had my front-row seat. And I know it’s a silly thing, but to have those seats—they’re so coveted, you can’t buy them—that was just a special moment. In terms of an interview, Rihanna was the first person I talked to and it was not official at all. I literally just went to Barnes & Noble and begged and begged and begged for her to speak to me. Granted, she answered one question, but it was enough.
Blog aside, you travel a lot. What is your favorite place you’ve been to?
I really love Paris, and lately I’ve been having a love affair with London—I feel like I’m cheating on Paris. But, I love Europe, London and Paris, and in the US I really loved going to Los Angeles. I lived there for a summer when I was working for Rachel Zoe.
What are some of your favorite things to do in DC?
I do enjoy walking in Georgetown. I find that it’s a much more relaxing pace. When I’m in New York, I don’t really have the leisure to just relax and stroll. I really like the restaurants; I’m a really big foodie. I started a food section on my site, so now I like going to little cafés, I like going to Baked & Wired to get cupcakes for my friends.
If someone were to come to you and say, “I want to start a blog,” is there any advice you would give them?
There are so many bloggers out there—I mean, there are bloggers doing this professionally and that’s how they’re making their money, and that’s not what I’m doing; I do it in the sense that this is what I use as my platform for my career in the future. But I really think—everyone says, “be original,” but it’s true. Try to have your own voice, because I feel like it’s really easy to tell when you’re trying to be like somebody else.
And, it really depends what type of blog you want to start, but people don’t have to think that it just has to be one topic. If you’re scattered and have a lot of interests, there’s a way to make that feel cohesive and authentic if you put the time and effort into it.