Chinese-Australian Margaret Zhang is the face and brains behind Shine By Three, one of Australia’s top style blogs. Margaret is also one of the personalities in Fashion Bloggers, a new series on E! that takes a look at what really goes on in the world of blogging. Last week, I was in Sydney for the launch of the series and I was lucky enough to spend 15 minutes of my afternoon in Westfield Sydney speaking to the petite powerhouse who is possibly the busiest 21-year-old I’ve ever met. Currently studying a Bachelor of Laws and Commerce at the University of Sydney, the classically trained ballerina and pianist is also a stylist, photographer, model, presenter, creative director, consultant and writer.
You’re a student – what’s your schedule like on a daily basis?
I just came from class! It’s crazy, I have class either two or three days a week and my full days are like 8 in the morning till 6.30 at night and maybe a one-hour lunch break if I’m lucky. I just have to fit my life around it. People always ask me, “Oh, so how do you do full time work and full time uni?” but there’s enough hours in a day, it’s not impossible.
And you still find time to finish your assignments?
Yeah! Well, I just got back from Paris and I was in New York for Fashion Week but I had to come home for assignments and exams and went back to Paris for Fashion Week. Now I’m back as I have assignments and exams. It’s just a matter of time management. No procrastination and no time for watching TV – you just have to buckle down and do the work.
Do your friends at uni get what you do?
Not really, which is a good thing. I think law school keeps me down to earth and keeps me balanced because I can have that escape. So if the fashion industry gets too stressful and too crazy, I can just run away to the law library and get some study done and if that gets too much, then I can come back to the fashion industry and get really creative and work with great projects and great people. I’m always worried as to what I’m going to do after I graduate because I have one more year to go and people are starting to ask!
As a blogger, you put yourself out there a lot. How do you find a balance between what is kept private and what you’re going to put out publicly?
I think it’s just a case of being really conscious of your digital brand without losing a sense of yourself. So I’m a strong believer in keeping everything real – your channels need to be genuine, come from the heart and make people relate to you and it can’t be too aspirational or inaccessible but you want to be able to have that conversation with your readers. The great thing about blogs, compared to magazines is that a magazine is a company – blogs are individual and it’s easy for you to become someone’s friend or online confidante. For me there are personal things that anybody really wouldn’t disclose.
How did your blog name Shine By Three come about?
I started my blog when I was sixteen – I was trying to be a professional ballet dancer and decided that it wasn’t the career path that I wanted to be doing. I still love it so much but you know, when you do something too heavily it takes the love out of it, the same with piano. I had saved up a bunch of imagery – I was inspired by couture, doing costume design for ballet and I studied film photography when I was like 11 or 12 and had come up with this huge digital archive that I wanted to post so Shine By Three was literally 2am and I was like, “Okay,…so I’m just gonna put this ‘cos ‘shine’ is a nice word, shine, shine, shine is a nice phrase.” Shine By Three I guess is kind of mathematical, I don’t know – I was delusional and half-asleep. I think I just started at a really good time when people were seeking out Australian creatives.
You’ve just returned from New York and Paris – what are some of your favourite cities to shop in or seek inspiration?
New York is somewhere I like to live eventually for maybe a couple of years and work out of there for a few years because it really inspires me to work really hard and people there work so hard. I think the best of the creative industry congregate in New York in a business sense and it really kicks start your mind in terms of growing yourself as a business. You can stop anybody on the street in New York and they’d have a story, which I think is awesome. Paris I love for inspiration – I mean, the architecture there, we just don’t have that kind of history in Australia so whenever as I go as a photographer and as a stylist, it’s just incredibly inspirational and then I come home and think, “Right, I have so many ideas” but we can’t execute it here because we don’t have that architecture. Paris is somewhere I would like to live for maybe a year for my soul [laughs].
You jet-set quite a fair bit – what are some of your travel must-haves?
This year I’ve been traveling so much that I never really unpacked my carry on bag. I always make sure I have a moisturiser, an exfoliator, a cleanser, a toner and some kind of serum. I like Aesop’s Antioxidant serum which is not too heavy for the plane because it’s so crazy – you’ll never even realise how dehydrating a plane can be especially if you’re on it for 14 plus hours. Last time I was on a plane, I was brushing my teeth and I knocked over my water and it was all over the ground. By the time I’ve gotten enough paper towels to clean up the mess, it already dried up. And I was like, “Are you serious? This is what I’m subjecting my skin to?” From then, I drink a liter of coconut water before I get on the plane and a liter after I get off the plane because the electrolytes in there help with rehydration. Always bring your own sleep mask and valuables – I never pack my computer, camera lenses or chargers in my main luggage because things can go missing. Always pack expensive jewelry with you and bring one extra outfit just in case.
What is the biggest misconception people have about your career?
For my readers, I think everyone is pretty clear. Some of my dearest friends still don’t understand what I do. Every time I come back from overseas for work, they’re like, “Oh, how was your holiday?” and I’m like, “Actually, I didn’t get any sleep because I was working.” It’s really easy for people to be like, “Oh, fashion – it’s so easy” or “traveling the world must be so fun” which is fine and it is so far. I’m so blessed to travel with work – it’s like the dream scenario. Everyone wants to do that but it is a lot of hard work. A lot of people ask me how do I make money from my blog, and for me, I don’t make money from my blog – I make money from the same as everyone else does like freelancing and working as a photographer, stylist, writer, consultant or model. So that is something really interesting that people can’t get their head around. I think a lot of people think that my boyfriend just trails me around the world or takes pictures of me and of course, he doesn’t.
What do you like to do to unwind and what’s your guilty pleasure?
Unfortunately, I don’t get that much time to unwind. When I’m not studying, I’m working and when I’m not working, I’m studying. If I do get time to unwind, I like to disconnect from the Internet and that happens maybe once a year. I like to drive down the coast of New South Wales – it’s so beautiful and there’s no reception down there [laughs]. Guilty pleasure – I like being in the ocean.
Name three countries on top of your travel list.
Easy! Cuba, a hundred percent! I’d really love to see Sweden because I have so many friends from Sweden and they say great things about it in summer. Vietnam and the Philippines are two countries in South East Asia I haven’t been to and I love Asian food. I’m Chinese background but I actually prefer South East Asian food.
Catch Fashion Bloggers on Wednesdays, 10pm (Malaysia) and 9pm (Singapore) on E! (Astro Channel 712) with repeats on Thursdays, 8pm (MAL)
