The graphic header of their website says it all: “Tom and Lorenzo: Fabulous and Opinionated.”

Tom Fitzgerald and Lorenzo Marquez are the Philadelphia-based couple behind tomandlorenzo.com. They began sharing their opinionated fabulousness in 2006 with Project RunGay, a blog where they recapped episodes of Bravo’s “Project Runway.”

“The whole concept of recapping shows was new, and I thought that nobody had a gay, funny, witty take at the time,” Marquez said.

The blog started as a creative side project, but soon the two found themselves dedicating more time to it than to their real jobs. In a risky and inspiring move, Fitzgerald and Marquez ultimately quit their day jobs and expanded into a full website covering celebrity style, reality television, fashion shows and collections, award shows and more.

Reading one of Fitzgerald and Marquez’s posts feels like you are gossiping over drinks with them. In posts about successful celebrity outfits, they often dole out congratulatory “snaps” or exclamations of “WERQ!” A whole category of posts on the site is entitled “Girl, That’s Not Your Dress,” and the couple employs the term “ladypants” when women sport trousers on the red carpet. They frequently call their readers “kittens” and “darlings.”
The couple does more than stay home with laptops, though. Fitzgerald and Marquez sat in the front row at many of New York Fashion Week’s biggest shows in September. In addition, they will be appearing in the Oct. 29season finale of Sundance Channel’s “All On The Line With Joe Zee.” Along with Zee, fashion director of Elle magazine, Fitzgerald and Marquez will give Nicole Richie advice on taking her fashion career to the next level.

What I love about Fitzgerald and Marquez is their attitude, which sets them apart from the blogging masses.

From the very beginning, the couple knew that giving the site personality was important.

“This is the number one rule of being a successful blogger: You have to establish a distinct voice,” Fitzgerald said.

As wonderful as their unique voice is, Fitzgerald and Marquez acknowledge that part of their success is due to good timing. Project RunGay was created when Project Runway reached the height of its popularity, giving them an audience right away.

“Our numbers were in the thousands within a week or two of launching the blog. That’s crazy,” Fitzgerald explained.

The couple also entered the world of blogging and social media just as it began to expand and become increasingly influential in the fashion industry. When Fitzgerald and Marquez launched their full site and abandoned their old Blogspot URL in February 2011, important editors, publicists and PR people in the fashion industry came out of the woodwork and began to acknowledge them.

They also gained recognition and made connections through Twitter. In my view, Fitzgerald and Marquez’s successful transition from amateur blogging to full online publishing sets an inspiring and relevant example. I’m sure many a budding college writer wishes for a similar transition.

Fitzgerald and Marquez have been together for 16 years, and their relationship influences their work greatly. When Marquez first suggested creating a blog, Fitzgerald was apprehensive, wondering if they had enough time to devote to it. Disagreements like that continue to shape the content of the site.

“We bicker constantly, but obviously it works. I kind of think that push and pull we have with each other benefits the site everyday,” Fitzgerald said.

In six years, the couple has transformed its side-project blog into a successful site with approximately 350,000 daily hits. They also have a book due out in February 2014 entitled “Everybody Wants to Be Me or Do Me.” The book will satirically examine celebrity egomania and advise readers to boost their confidence by borrowing a bit of that same self-involvement.

But while I eagerly await the book, I’ll continue to satiate my need for sassy fashion commentary with Fitzgerald and Marquez’s unique blogging voice, and I recommend you do the same.

Ian Simon-Curry is a junior public relations major. His column appears every other Monday. Follow him on Twitter at @incrediblyian. He can be reached at insimonc@syr.edu.

Published on October 15, 2012 at 2:56 am