In Other Blogger News

Congrats to Julie and The Coutorture Network. 

THE YOUNG AND RESTLESS: The precocious founders of the Coutorture fashion blog network, Julie Fredrickson and Phil Leif, have revealed the reason for their recent move to San Francisco: They have been acquired by Sugar Inc., the publisher of the PopSugar celebrity blog that is backed by $15 million from Sequioia and NBC. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Fredrickson will continue as editor in chief of the network. Leif, who left a programming job at Gucci, will become Sugar senior engineer.

Leif and Fredrickson, both in their early 20s, became acquainted through each other’s blogs shortly before they moved to New York and met in person in early 2006. In short order, they founded Coutorture, which they ran out of various sublets, moving every few months for more than a year.

The two became known for many firsts: Fredrickson was the first fashion blogger to post live from inside the New York Fashion Week tents in Bryant Park, in February last year. Working with only a hired cameraman, they put up more same-day runway video than any other media outlet the next fashion week. Fredrickson also achieved notoriety for a spat with fellow bloggers, which led to 11 of them quitting the growing network and for (briefly) scoring an impromptu interview with Anna Wintour, which was quickly shut down by p.r. Kelly Cutrone.

“There are some really awesome fashion bloggers out there that need help, and now we are able to put more money behind the [Coutorture] vision and realize what it was meant to be,” said Sugar Inc. founder and chief executive Brian Sugar. “Now they will have the resources to execute what they always wanted to do.”

Coutorture, Sugar Inc. and recently acquired ShopStyle plan to evolve the look and function of fashion blogs, said Sugar. For example, Leif has been tweaking ShopStyle’s widgets so bloggers can use them to create magazine-like fashion spreads.

Coutorture has approximately 240 blogs in its network, and is in the process of updating its contracts, said Fredrickson. She estimated network traffic at 20 million visitors a month, based on bloggers’ self-reported traffic and Alexa rankings. Sugar said the company plans to acquire more companies in the future. It has more than five million unique visitors a month. — Cate T. Corcoran