Before Instagram, Spotify, even iPhones, when Blackberries were still just a fruit, the internet was a Wild West of wide open spaces, yet to be tamed by things like hashtags or the concept of a 'social media presence'. Before the now-ubiquitous social platforms came to dominate our online social lives, there existed a special pocket of the internet centered around sites like lookbook.nu, perezhilton.com, Tumblr, hypem.com, and Nylon, from which a precious pre-influencer internet It Girl utopia bloomed.
One serially dishevelled teen at the center of this era of proto-social internetting was Cory Kennedy; the world's first internet generated It Girl. In the real world she was just another derpy high school kid from the LA suburbs, but online she became a sensation, first as protege, partner, and muse of thecobrasnake.com, and later in her own right.
Cory and friends' internet reign, which peaked around summer of 2007, is rife with fashion inspiration, especially for artfully unpolished thrift-heads like us. Her style hits as hard today as it did 15 years ago, the mark of a true icon. Looking at these photos now, from a place of Facetune, Photoshop, filters and fillers, the rawness they capture is incredibly striking. It's candid, it's unfussy, it looks accessible as opposed to aspirational, it looks FUN.
This post is dedicated to Peaches (RIP), Paris, Alexa Chung, Devon Aoki, and all the other naughty oughtie It Girls who walked so we could run.
xoxo, Black Market
