If you believe fashion editors, spring’s hottest trend is “recession chic.” During this generation’s largest economic crisis, magazines still face pressure to push high-priced goods in glossy editorials. But their strategy of merely mixing Walmart with Prada hasn’t sustained reader loyalty, or spared women’s magazines any ridicule (“What’s Wrong with Vogue?“). The Audit Bureau of Circulations reports that leading titles like Vogue and Glamour have suffered double digit declines in newsstand sales, despite shifting emphasis to more “affordable” styles. And ad pages for top fashion magazines collectively tumbled nearly twenty-two percent from just one year ago.
It’s not that fashionistas have abandoned the quest for viewing inspirational style—they’re just looking elsewhere. A fresh crop of international street style blogs are flourishing online. Though industry-wide statistics for such sites are anecdotal, the creators of street style blogs claim steady viewer increases. Their format is deceptively simple, and importantly, cheap—compared to the exorbitant costs of print spreads. For fashion blogs, photographers stroll streets in pursuit of stylish civilians who gamely pose. Full-length portraits are subsequently posted online and readers then scroll through them and freely, and frequently, post comments. The cities represented by these blogs are truly diverse, from fashion epicenters like New York and Paris to Manila and Helsinki.
These bloggers aren’t the first photographers to document street fashion on-the-fly. Bill Cunningham has captured fashionable pedestrians in New York for the Sunday Times’ “On the Street” column for the past thirty years. Other magazines routinely feature celebrities walking the red carpet and attending parties in front-of-the-book spreads. But street style blogs rarely feature celebrities or socialites and are not, by and large, New York-centric. Instead, nameless yet trendy young women pose in layers, either a mishmash of crayola brights or multiple muted tones, and pair ethnic scarves and tulip coats with high-heel booties and artfully disheveled hair. Men in fedoras, well-tailored blazers, and chunky scarves routinely appear.
Location matters too. The playful characters featured on Austin Style Watch (www.austinstylewatch.com) skew young, as one expects of a university town. Subjects take advantage of warm weather with colorful exuberance. The young fashionistas of Tokyo Style Arena (www.style-arena.jp) hail from the city’s most fashionable districts: chic Omotesando and Ginza, trendy Shibuya and Harajuku. Tokyo’s urbanites are daring, mixing plaids and florals or pink and red with a concerted effort to break fashion rules.
The endless array of global trends makes these sites compelling daily Internet stops. But Andrea Horan and Matt Matheson, the team behind the popular Dublin Streets (www.dublinstreets.blogspot.com) cite another reason for the increasing interest in blogs like theirs. “We think street style sites are growing in popularity for the same reason that the ‘It’ bag is going out of fashion. People are sick of being told what to wear and what is stylish and prefer a more diverse take on fashion.” Jenny Soderman of Denmark’s Copenhagen Street Style (www.copenhagenstreetstyle.dk) agrees. “Readers are craving authenticity in fashion. People are tired of seeing the same models and designer goods,” she adds.
Street style blogs rarely have advertisements and don’t identify the labels or prices of clothes featured on their subjects. (Readers often resort to posting comments imploring fashion insiders to identify a coveted piece, with varying success). The carefree clothes worn by men and women on the go starkly contrasts with the careful celebrity oriented merchandising that still dominates mainstream fashion.
“Street style is relatable and reflects ordinary life while editorials are highly stylized, too perfect and mostly out of reach. Right now it seems people feel more inspired by real people rather than ‘artificial’ models,” says Mary Sherpe of Stil in Berlin (www.stilinberlin.blogspot.com). These blogs have an advantage during lean economic times too. Readers gravitate to sites that give them fresh ideas on how to mix and match clothes and accessories they already own. The message of individuality resonates at a time when magazines beholden to advertisers must still tout goods—albeit now chosen with lower prices—in an endless cycle of new trends.
It is an error, however, to completely dissociate style blogs from mainstream fashion. To find their subjects, photographers often stake out shopping districts of Milan, Paris, and New York. And during Fashion Weeks, blogs are saturated with extravagant style when print magazine editors are routinely featured—adorned in designer clothes. One of the most successful and influential street style photographers, Scott Schuman of New York’s Sartorialist (www.thesartorialist.blogspot.com) has blurred the line between blogger and fashion insider. According to Scott, his site receives nearly 90,000 hits per day and his eagle-eye for innovative style and diverse subjects (not just in ethnicity, but age and gender) has caught the eyes of industry insiders. He now shoots for GQ and Lucky, has shows at Saks Fifth Avenue, and takes pictures and videos for Style (www.style.com), Vogue’s online presence. None of Scott’s integration into the world of high fashion has diminished his ability to fill Sartorialist with unique content: his subjects still race across New York in stylish anonymity. The difference is the desire of every editor to be featured on his site.
What do photographers look for? Mary Sherpe focuses on those who fuse high fashion with vintage or handmade clothes. “I don’t like when it looks like a person is wearing a costume or when someone is just showing off labels. I like it when people invest time in the image their clothes project and find interesting designers—not Marc Jacobs or H&M,” Sherpe says. When she finds a subject, most happily agree to pose for a portrait. Matheson and Horan of Dublin Streets say confidence is paramount. “True comfort in style shows on a person and makes for the best picture,” Horan says. Jenny Soderman of Copenhagen Street Style remains open to new styles but has a few firm dislikes. “New Wave style is overexposed in Copenhagen. Leggings are tired,” she says. Considering Copenhagen only has a few hours of daylight in winter, the ubiquity of these disfavored styles challenges Soderman.
The popularity of these sites doesn’t ensure career longevity for fashion photographers, however. Almost all support their passion for style with nine to five jobs. “Our site is growing, and my hope is that it can be a career,” says Soderman, who also works at a public relations firm. In a year when glossies have come under attack for featuring nearly all white models, street style blogs offer a more global perspective (“Conspicuous by their Presence“)—though it seems unlikely that they will replace established magazines (or sustain many careers) anytime soon. Perhaps the greatest thrill of such blogs is that the stunning stranger captured on the streets of your hometown could very well be you.
Richa Gulati is a freelance writer and flamenco dancer based in New York City. She regularly writes about culture, health, and style for magazines such as Teen Vogue and Dance. Richa is a frequent contributor to JANERA.com and her work is at www.richagulati.com.
