After ten years, the website Repeller (more famously known as Man Repeller) is shutting down.
In case you didn’t know, Repeller was a site founded by Leandra Medine Cohen in 2010 that first started as a personal style blog. Over the years, it developed into a website designed to empower women by rejecting the male gaze and dressing up for yourself. On their website, they described themselves as “a blog about style trends women love and men hate.”
But since rebranding themselves to “Repeller” in September to keep up with the current climate, the website opted to expand the corners of women empowerment and stated, “We think our name should reflect something that’s been true for a while: being a “Man Repeller” was defined as empowering yourself by deflecting the male gaze when this site began 10 years ago, but today discovering yourself and earning your confidence feels far more multidimensional.”
A month after the rebranding, the website decided it was in their best interest to shut down due to budget constraints. Cohen said in a statement to The Cut, “The company has been self-funded by its operations since its launch ten years ago as a personal blog but due to financial constraints, we are no longer able to sustain the business.”
Man Repeller for years served as an avenue for women to embrace themselves through style and break away from the idea that we dress for people other than ourselves. Cohen told The Cut in a 2014 interview, “I feel very much like the Man Repeller ethos isn’t about fashion. It’s much more about a woman feeling comfortable in her own skin, and we’re using fashion as the vehicle to discuss this sense of self-confidence.” Despite its shutdown, the pieces and the legacy it left behind for women everywhere will remain forever. Here’s to not giving a sh*t what people think of the clothes we wear.
Featured photo screengrabbed from the “Man Repeller x Dior” video
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