Missminimalista?
Hi, my name is Katrijn, but since most English-speaking readers find it difficult to pronounce my name… you can just call me Kat! Nice to meet ya!
I live in Europe (near Ghent in Belgium) with my boyfriend and a beautiful black cat. Chocolate, French fries (ugh, they’re Belgian, you know ;)), Brussel sprouts,… all day every day! No, but seriously, we eat French fries each week!
Fulltime blogger? Not quite!
I work full time as an e-commerce manager and SEO specialist, digital marketer, and project manager. I am lucky to have been able to turn my hobby into my profession for 15+ years now. Lucky me!
So, working on Missminimalista is mainly reserved for the evenings and weekends, which doesn’t take away the fact that since 2009 I still love to blog. This is my first English blog, the other ones are in Dutch.
Why fashion? My credentials.
So, why am I writing about fashion, color analysis, etc? I took some courses because I really wanted to know more about those topics since they interested me so much.
I have written as a professional copywriter for big fashion magazines in Europe and I have handled their social media strategies, I have also worked with big European brands for my own blogs.
Work:
- one of the biggest and well-known fashion and beauty blogs in the Netherlands and Belgium (Glamourista.nl)
- worked with Zalando, Veritas, BNP Paribas,…
- Completed a Styling course (LOI, 2012)
- Completed a color analysis course (LOI, 2012)
- handled the social media of different barbers and hairdressers
- translated the social media for Lush Belgium (Dutch and French) in 2011
- social media strategy & implementation for Sanoma Belgium (Flair, Libelle, Feeling & all of the interior design magazines)
- working in a digital agency
My Dutch Blog: Glamourista
Studies and courses:
- I studied Journalism (and Linguistics: Dutch, Spanish and French) and graduated in 2010, but was already SEO-copywriting for a couple of well-known digital marketing agencies as a student.
- Bachelor’s degree in Linguistics, Master’s degree in Journalism
How it all started?
I read blogs like Temptalia and at the age of 19 I started to get into make-up (I was quite a tomboy before that and a late bloomer) and experimented a lot with it. This was followed by a severe Youtube addiction (still love to binge-watch Youtube, by the way) and I figured I’d like to have my own blog as well.
And so it happened: I learned how to install WordPress, discovered how to buy hosting, a domain name, and started. At first, the focus of my blog was on solely makeup, but over the years my love for fashion has grown a lot.
Since I’ve been living on my own, there’s also a large portion of lifestyle and interior design (oh dear, had I told you about my Pinterest addiction yet?).
Cruelty-free/ animal-free beauty blog
Since the spring of 2017, I started to get more and more annoyed by beauty brands that are not free of animal testing and want to make a profit by testing their care and beauty products on animals and selling them in China.
I looked at my makeup stash and discovered that almost half of them were not free of animal testing. That had to and would change! And here we are, January 2021, and I think almost 95% of both my makeup and grooming products are cruelty-free (except for a few presents…).
Green blog: MissMinimalista
Around 2014 I started reading more and more about minimalism. It interested me, but I didn’t really do anything with it. But look, the seed had been planted and for years I was decluttering. I became more interested in greener living, simpler living,… almost always ‘side effects’ of a more minimalistic lifestyle.
My target group
Oh gosh, this is a tough one. My target group? These are girls, boys, men, women, transgenders,… Everyone who wants to come and read here on Missminimalista. We don’t do pigeonholes here. Usually, between 14 and 55, but of course, there are exceptions (I wouldn’t want it any other way).
To summarize: people who, like me, have a passion for cruelty-free make-up, fashion, and a greener and minimalist lifestyle! Their taste is also very different: from budget products to high-end. Deliciously diverse!
Fun facts about me
- I’m tiny!
- Have been blogging since 2008
- I was one of the first beauty Youtubers in the Netherlands and Belgium back in 2009 but had to stop filming because of my first job
- I have always had a black cat in my life
- I’m a bullet journaling addict
- This means: I have way too many notebooks
- Decluttering really calms me down
- I have lived in Lier, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Turnhout and now near Ghent
- I have moved more than 15 times in my life
- I wear Chrismas socks about 300 days a year