New name, same platform

A throwback to peak Melanophilia era, circa 2015

Oh hi, welcome to the blog formerly known as Melanophilia.com. A fictional scientific name supposedly meaning “a love for the colour black”, coined at a time when fashion blogs were all the rage and I thought wearing black was the epitome of self restraint and timeless personal style.

Isn’t it funny how, after a period of apparent extinction, blogging is now in its second wave? While ten years ago bloggers slowly but surely abandoned the written medium and were reborn as Instagram influencers, many of them apparently missed a space to share more of their thoughts.

This time around, the platform of choice is Substack. The content? As diverse as blogging was in its original incarnation, before the fully styled editorials on random people’s doorstep: thoughts, opinions, columns, some random covetable things someone stumbled upon. I’m thrilled to have this type of content back, let alone on an easy to use platform that’s, well, alive (RIP Bloglovin’).

That being said...

No Substack for me (for now)

For now, I don’t think Substack is the place for me. I prefer having my ramblings and photos exist in my own space, and not being dependent on another platform. I like the freedom I have here with regards to layout and technicalities. And I like writing something informational from time to time that seems to answer people’s questions (or at least I like to think so, based on the search engine traffic some posts get).

Something valuable that Substack has provided me with, is the insight that people are willing to subscribe to newsletters. I would like to send out a brief monthly roundup of my blogposts and some bits and bobs that I found interesting. I’m still figuring out whether to use my own platform’s newsletter function, or to switch to Substack just for this part. For now, just subscribe all the way at the bottom if you’re interested, and I’ll keep you in the loop.

Adios Melanophilia, hello GoatWoolSocks.com

While I prefer to stay on my own platform, there is one thing I’m happily retiring: my old blog name. I wear colour a lot more than I wear black nowadays. Also, sustainability plays a major part in what I wear, and I wanted a new name to reflect that.

What do goat wool socks have to do with all this, you may ask? It’s a literal translation of geitenwollensokken, a Dutch term jokingly describing a person that’s a bit hippie-dippie. I call myself the “goat wool socks type” on the regular, so if the sock fits, I might as well wear it - and pay for the corresponding .com domain :)

A lot of words to say, “Welcome to GoatWoolSocks.com.com! Where everything stays the same, except for the name”.

Thank you for being here!