Today’s interview is the first I have yet conducted with a professional blogger. I’m not going to assume anything about what you picture when I say that! But I hope that from now on, when you imagine someone who has made a career and vocation of writing for the web, your mind leaps to Janice, creator of The Vivienne Files.
Janice was writing about sustainable fashion, Parisian practicality, and artistic inspiration made personal even before she launched her own site in 2011. Her archives demonstrate how frequent and consistent that writing has been, with multiple posts nearly every week during that time. Those archives contain travel reports, book reviews, and cleanout guides. But Janice is best known for her primary topic, which is the assembly of capsule wardrobes.
I love TVF because the whole site is a testament to what a gifted creator can do with a clear creative constraint. I myself own very little womenswear, so one might not expect me take to writing on stocking a femme-leaning closet. But I have! Anyone can follow Janice’s process as she works through an idea, and take pleasure in doing so. I think that is in part because she chose such a specific focus to practice for years on end.
Janice kindly took some time to answer questions from me in the midst of her busy schedule of writing and travel. As I edited together the following conversation, I took the liberty of hyperlinking things where appropriate. Apart from one drawing, all images in this post belong to my interlocutor. Read on to learn more about Janice’s personal values, her digital tools, and her plans for the future of The Vivienne Files.
Thanks for making the time to correspond with me, Janice. I am often inspired by your creative spark and the amazing consistency of your work translating images into clothing palettes! I’d love to know more about how you choose a starting point and then go about collecting the pieces of any given capsule.
Starting point can be anything. Often I will start with a work of art that I’ve seen in the Art Institute of Chicago, or online. I follow a couple of accounts on Instagram which post at least one painting every day – they are a rich source of beautiful things.
Kind of at the same time, I’m eyeing my main retail sources – especially L.L.Bean, Lands’ End, J. Crew, and Alex Mill. I will particularly look to see if any of them have featured a new accent color for the month or season. In the best of all possible worlds, I will see a quick overlap between a color that’s readily available, and a painting that’s been calling my name for a few days or months.
After I’ve settled on the artwork, and I know at least where a few garments are available, it’s just like normal shopping. Where do I want to look? I always look at the above-mentioned stores, as well as Nordstrom, Wolf & Badger, Talbots, J.Jill, and anyplace else that seems likely. I will also search online through Google or other portals for a specific garment – “soft rose cardigan” is a likely sort of thing I will try.
AND… I never use Target, nor Amazon, nor Walmart. Just a personal boycott of companies that mooch from the US government and/or don’t observe DEI goals…
I want to summarize a bit about the origins of your site for the benefit my readers, so feel free to fact-check me here… I paged back to your first posts in 2011, and you described the blog as a revival of a popular series you had worked on already! I understand that was from a Yahoo group called Je Ne Sais Quoi, where you struck a chord with what you learned from your acquaintance with the real Vivienne.
The Vivienne Files weren’t even MY name for things – some of the readers on Je Ne Sais Quoi collected all of things that I wrote about Vivienne and named that The Vivienne Files. I didn’t realize that the document was still kicking around until I Googled my own name one day (looking for a work-related thing) and found that some other blogger had made reference to it.
So I decided to buy up all of the relevant domains, thinking that it would at least keep someone else from writing something using my thoughts! From such small origins are blog legends built…
I saw in those early posts that you came up with some of the signature elements of your blog pretty early on. For instance, you often frame a narrative around a hypothetical wearer called “our heroine,” which is something that dates back to at least 2015.
I don’t think of the elements of my blog posts as being signature elements – they’re just the way that I write. Especially the use of the word “heroine” – I always try to remember that each of us is the star of the show that we are watching in our minds, thus we are our own heroes and heroines. Well now, we’re all heroes – I’m all for getting rid of gender terms!
Similarly, you’ve worked with the idea of distilling a color palette from a single visual source (like a season, a flower, a nebula, or even a duck!) for a long time; I think it is so elegant and flexible as a creative formula. When you have finished assembling any given capsule wardrobe, you have a number of custom visual rubrics you employ to lay it out visually. Can you tell me a little about how you have refined those rubrics over the years?
The various templates that I use came about when I stopped for two minutes to think about how I pack… If I was only traveling for two or three days, I would try to limit my packing to 6 things (which grew into the Six-Pack), if I had to be gone for a week I would wear three garments and pack 10. That obviously became the Whatever’s Clean 13. It’s essentially my nature to give structure and a plan to things that might be overwhelming. But I have to say that my personal experiences traveling are what illuminated all of the packing templates.
I would guess there is no simple answer to this, but I have such respect for the steady cadence of your writing—how did you build the habit of publishing at such a steady pace? Do you queue up things in bursts and schedule them out, or do you prefer to focus on a single wardrobe and publish whenever you get it done?
I post, very regularly, three times a week. It’s not all that difficult to be motivated when you have a lot to say, and saying it is the only way you get paid! The blog has been my only work for over 10 years. I took one fairly long hiatus in 2021 in June, which is to say that there were only 7 or 8 posts that month. I was in Florida attending to family business and couldn’t work. My income took a hit!
I will queue posts before I go on vacation, but normally I only post a few days before something is published; if I get too far out ahead of myself, the items to which I link will sell out before the post goes live. Product availability is probably the biggest headache I face…
You have mentioned that you have sold menswear in the past, and you have a few articles under that tag in your archives. As a person who dresses in menswear myself, is there any guidance you’d like to offer readers like me for adapting your principles and techniques?
My wardrobes are pretty easy to convert to menswear – a lot of the garments that I feature are pretty genderless! The best advice I can offer to anybody – pick a color palette, and stick 95% to it. You will sometimes wander into an accent color that appeals, but don’t be waffling back and forth between grey and brown, or navy and olive green. Unless those are your core colors!
And take your time shopping. Save up lots of money and buy something exceptional. Wear it to pieces, mend it, and wear it to pieces again. Repeat outfits. Be known as the person who always wears striped tee shirts, or chambray, or button-front shirts in floral prints…
I’m curious about your business, too, if you are okay with talking about it. I know you have ads and affiliate links, and offer your downloads for sale directly, but from what I can tell you don’t offer a paid tier with exclusive content for your readers. Is that something you’ve considered, or do you have thoughts on it as an approach?
The only sources for income that I have are through commissions on purchases, and advertising on the blog. Once in a blue moon when I have a post without hyperlinks I will post a “buy me a coffee” button, which gives my readers the opportunity to donate straight to me in $5 increments.
I’ve considered making The Vivienne Files a private, for pay site, but I get a lot of traffic from people who just drop in for a few weeks, pick up the information and ideas that they need, and then drift back to their lives. I also get a lot of attention on Pinterest, which would pretty much evaporate if the general public couldn’t stop in to take a look from time to time.
Almost every day, someone either offers to write a blog post for me (never going to happen!) or they offer me merchandise. I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve been offered free shoes! But I eschew that kind of thing, because if you want to write, start a blog, and if you want to compensate me, I prefer dollars or euros. I miss a lot of the fun stuff….
A lot of people running independent blogs enjoy talking about the digital tools they use: their current laptop or desktop, their operating system of choice, and the programs where they compose or publish their work. I have gleaned that your worksheets are built in Excel and you generally do your graphic composition in Powerpoint.
Can you share a few more details of the software and hardware you use for your work? Do you have a dedicated space for writing in your home, or do you often work from cafes or the like? (I know you’ve mentioned people-watching at the Art Institute cafe!)
I do have a dedicated space in our apartment – I have a desk in our main living/dining area, with the world’s largest corkboard hanging above. My corkboard is actually covered with pink fabric in roughly the same pink as the background for TVF, and it’s six feet wide. I have all six of my monthly feature paintings tacked up, with the color palette for those wardrobes. Other pictures are there – a print of my favorite painting by Caspar David Friedrich, a print-out of my color palette, as well as a template with my summer wardrobe… A bunch of brooches, and pearl necklaces, business cards, a map of Ireland, a big purple heart with the letter P in it… It’s quite the assortment.
Your first question makes me laugh – I might be the last blogger in the world who has about ZERO interest in their computer and all that background stuff. I’ve been using PowerPoint to prepare the images for my blog from the very beginning, and I have kept that updated through new releases of Microsoft Office. I’ve been using the same laptop (which is a charitable description – it’s pretty big!) for at least 10 years. I’m planning to end The Vivienne Files at the end of 2027, so I’m hopeful that this computer will keep running until I’m ready to retire…
I did not realize you were planning out the end of The Vivienne Files—does that mean you’ll be entering retirement? What a dream!
Well, I’m 66, and my husband turns 64 later in September. We’ve been working for decades – sometimes at jobs that only afforded us two meals a day! So now that we have enough saved, and I qualify for Medicare, we’re going to shift our lives.
Primarily, my husband wants to spend more time with his mother – who is 96. Right now, he can only visit her on Saturdays, and he would like to see her two or three times a week if possible.
My mother lived with us the last 2 years of her life, and so he fully grasps how much fun, and how gratifying it can be, to hang out with the old folks…
And we would like to travel now, while we’re still well enough to carry a bag and climb a flight or two of stairs. Old age creeps up quietly, but quickly!
I’m curious about your plans for the site after you conclude your writing there. Do you plan to maintain it as an archive for a period of time? Have you considered selling it as a business, or handing the blog off to someone else?
I don’t have any firm plans; I work with a company in Canada that hosts things, and has staff who do things like Pinterest and Facebook for me. If they want to take it over for a while they’re welcome to it; I don’t imagine that any sane person is going to try to replicate the content of the blog the way I do it! It’s a weird talent…
Just one last question—where are you off to for your next travel jaunt? Or, if you have an idea in mind, is there a trip you imagine taking to celebrate and give your blog a sendoff in 2027?
I’m probably going to England in November to visit my uncle, and I’m going to Paris in December. I go to Paris every year to see the Christmas decorations!
