Sarasota-based fashion influencer approaches 2M Instagram followers

Sarasota-based Blair Eadie is that rare breed of fashion influencer, given she’s been in the game so long. 

She’s had an Instagram account practically since its founding and she started her career on Blogspot. Yes, her entry into the industry came when influencers didn’t yet exist and were instead known as fashion bloggers. In 16 years and as a testament to the speed of technology, that term already seems obsolete. 

But the 41-year-old fashion influencer actually started her blog as a way to boost her then actual job. 

“I actually started it thinking, I’m going to document my love of fashion styling outfits to actually help my merchandising career,” she says. At the time, in 2010, she was working in merchandising in the men’s department of Old Navy, but hoped to move to women’s and more contemporary or luxury brands. “I knew that my resume might have a harder time getting noticed, so I actually started [the blog] from more of a business angle for merchandising.” 

It was a time that may now seem innocent, when blogging was thought of largely as a hobby and not a business, when people were sharing for their love of a topic and not out of hope to make money or find fleeting fame, Eadie says. 

“Now, when people dig in and they want to become an influencer, content creator, whatever you want to call it, many people are starting with a whole business plan from the beginning,” says Eadie, a 2007 University of Florida graduate. “It’s much, much, much more calculated. It’s rare nowadays that somebody goes in and creates a whole corporate career and then later says, ‘now, I’m going to influence.’” 

Courtesy image

When Eadie first started her blog, she named it Atlantic-Pacific as a nod to her then location in San Francisco and her northern Virginia roots. And even though many influencers have changed their initial names in the years that followed to one that more closely resembled their actual name, Eadie has stayed true to her original title, the Atlantic-Pacific brand still intact. 

This is perhaps the easiest way to explain Eadie’s approach to innovation throughout her own career: know when to take on a new challenge and know when to go back to basics. Her staying power has not come from always jumping on the latest trend but often from staying true to her foundational values. 

Many ways

Eadie has now been full-time running her blog, Instagram and brand partnerships along with her partner and husband, Andrew Powell, the company’s only employee, for almost 10 years. 

But how does making money as an influencer actually work? She breaks down her revenue streams into three pots: affiliate marketing, which comes through Instagram or her website, and is a steady but smaller piece of the pie. Then, there are brand partnerships, which are paid posts on Instagram or her site that are sponsored by the brand or store itself, like Nordstrom or Saks Fifth Avenue. In that case, she is paid for the post itself rather than based solely on performance. And the third and perhaps most lucrative but hardest to acquire are licensing and revenue-share agreements, in which Eadie collaborates with a fashion brand, like Frances Valentine or Tuckernuck. 

These collaborations were part of what pushed her to go out on her own. In 2018, she launched her first capsule collection with Nordstrom’s Halogen brand in what has since gone on to become a stable part of her business. At the time, it felt innovative — to her, Eadie says, though not necessarily in the industry. 

“When I think about collaborations, I think of the cool Target collaborations, but they are with a brand like Missoni, right?” she says. “I just never thought that I would have a big enough audience or that I would garner enough interest that a $16 billion company like Nordstrom would say, ‘Oh, we want you to do a collaboration.’”

No place like home

While there is so much Eadie does do, there is also a lot she has chosen not to do — namely, expand her audience to platforms like TikTok and become a more open influencer who shares their breakfast or their latest vacations or their personal life with their followers. 

“I see it as, those are my strengths, that’s what I’m going to stick to, and I’m going to leave it to other people that want to evolve their content into these other avenues, like TikToks or Reels or speaking to camera,” she says. “The flip side of that, though, is with that kind of air of mystery, I don’t have a super strong parasocial relationship with my audience.” 

Photo by Andrew Powell

Another unusual angle: being based in an off-the-grid fashion place like Sarasota. Eadie and Powell moved to Sarasota full-time in 2019. What was initially a temporary move became permanent when Eadie and Powell saw some of the benefits of the area — more space, more time outdoors, closer to family. But that also presented a problem: her photo backdrops were often urban landscapes, usually recognizable as New York City or some other major metropolitan area. In Sarasota, that wouldn’t be possible. Where would she shoot? Would she lose followers? 

“It’s a little bit jarring to be walking around town in this crazy Christopher John Rogers gown,” she says. “So I made this decision to pivot my content visually to post on colored walls. I said, Let’s just make it all about the outfit.’ My engagement actually went through the roof, and it was such a weird, fascinating unlock.” 

Now, Eadie finds the most eclectic places to shoot in Sarasota — obscure locations that can even be “next to a dumpster,” she says jokingly, but that can also include a cutout wall “where the light hits in a really cool way at 6 p.m.”

When she thinks of innovation in her own career, she comes back to her longevity. People often define her as one of the originals, one of the few still standing in the industry. Her sense of innovation comes from the daily work, the numerous choices to do more or do less in certain avenues that have given her the ability to stay in a field with an incredibly high turnover rate. There’s a balance between stability and nimbleness. 

“It’s been interesting, because I’ve had to innovate and change daily, weekly, monthly with how this industry has moved,” she says. “But at the same time, it’s almost as if I think I’m still around because I also stuck to my long-term goals of how I want to show up every day and how I want to present myself. I think if I had jumped on every bandwagon and every trend, I don’t think I’d still be around.”