In 1978 Bill Cunningham submitted a compilation of impromptu photos of famous people to The New York Times. He started this type of photography after taking a picture of Greta Garbo walking on the streets of New York.
These pictures were a turning point for The New York Times as it was the first time any newspaper had published unauthorized photos of celebrities. Bill Cunningham started photographing people on the streets of New York and their fashion. He then became the founding father of what we now call street style. Today street style blogs capture the fashion of people on the street and are published online. This article is going to take a look at New York's most interesting street style blogs.
1.
The Sartorialist
Founder/blogger/photographer Scott Schuman began The Sartorialist in 2005. He is known as the first Street Style blogger. He started his blog with the idea of "creating a two-way dialogue about the world of fashion and its relationship to daily life." He started with photographing stylish and interesting people on the streets of New York City. As his popularity grew, he also started taking pictures of people all around the globe. In addition to the blog, Schuman has been featured in GQ, Vogue Italia, Vogue Paris, and Interview. In 2009 Penguin published an anthology of his images. The book has sold over 100,000 copies to date and been translated into languages from English to Korean. The limited Bespoke Edition sold out in less than three months. Schuman has works in the permanent collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. His blog is for many in the fashion world, the number one Street Style blog ever.
2.
Backyard Bill
In June of 2008 photographer Bill started to take pictures of his friends and people that he met around his home in Brooklyn, NY. Blogger Bill wanted to capture interesting people, show their style, and discover which trends were developing. He also wanted to capture "the ways in which people adapt to the cultural influences around them", according to Bill. He started taking pictures of them in his backyard. After that he started photographing the subjects' own spaces and surroundings to expand and get more in-depth with each subject. Bill always asks each person a series of questions: where they are from? Where they are going? What they are interested in? He has started taking pictures of interesting people not only in New York City, but all over the globe. His interesting approach to capturing street style in his or their backyards makes his blog worthwhile.
3.
AltamiraNYC
Altamira NYC is the tumblr blog for modelsoffduty.com that was created by Craig Arend. Arend has been blogging since 2007 and is a freelancer for the New York Times. But in 2008 he founded the street style blog, Models Off Duty. This popular street style blog captures models and their personal style on the streets of New York City. This street style blog took a unique approach by photographing only models. In an interview for website Fashion Notes, Craig Arend says that: "An image that captures the true persona of the person being shot. That's most important. Technical details and composition all matter as well, but those are of secondary importance to me [and] to capturing the true character of the person being shot." Altamira NYC is must read street style blog for all of those who are fans of top models. And really who isn't?
4.
The NYC Streets
Photographer Melodie Jeng started taking photos on the street in New York in 2008. She started the street photography as a way to explore the city and see new places. Jeng began posting images of street fashion on the internet in June 2011. According to Jeng, "as a way for me to practice taking portraits, learn what people were wearing on the street, and continue to see the city." NYC Streets is a blog that wants to tell the stories about each person and reflect the place and time they were taken. Jeng thinks it is important to "balance photographs from Fashion Weeks with everyday New York street style." This blog is a perfect mixture of the fashion elite and the everyday fashionable people of New York City.
5.
Street Peeper
Photographer and blogger Streetpeeper Phil Oh started the street style blog Street Peeper in late 2006, after according to Oh having had a "variety of odd-jobs" including selling beanie babies out of his NYU dorm room. Streetpeeper started out doing actual "on-the-street street style — people on the street not at fashion week", says Oh. He would spend a weekend or one or two weekday afternoons, in Soho or the Lower East Side or Williamsburg. He started out working with a point-and-shoot camera. Oh stated in an interview for Buzz Feed that he didn't care so much about composition or if the images were sharp. "I felt like the actual quality of the photography didn't really matter, and that it was much more about the subject and trying to make a pretty image." He started going to fashion week because he figured he could get a lot of pictures at one time. Oh admits that when he started, he didn't really have a very developed sense of style. He would just capture what was eye-catching. Once the focus of street style turned to fashion weeks, and editors and models and "it" girls, the blogger started looking for the people that would be popular, like Anna Dello Russo. After the blog starting gaining popularity, Oh upgraded his camera. During Fashion Week in Paris he captured a shot that would launch his career to the top of the fashion ladder, Vogue Magazine. Streetpeeper has evolved and grown into a worldwide street style blog. Fashionable people, famous and not so famous, from around the globe are featured on Phil Oh's blog.
Through the years street style blogging in New York has evolved from point and shoot pictures of random stylish people to amazing candid shots of the rich and famous during fashion week to collaborations with world renowned fashion empires. The streets are filled with fashion lovers seeking the coveted bloggers to capture their style. With so many fashionistas waiting at each corner of the city, the end of street style blogs is nowhere in sight. So dress up and hit the pavement to get caught by one of these top bloggers.
Share This Article
