Street Fashion Bloggers: Best Sites For Street Style And Trends

Illustration by Garance Dore (follow her on Twitter)

The influence of the street fashion bloggers has been tremendous over the past few years - some of them are more influential than the others, but the trend is still very obvious and noticeable - street fashion dictates the trends, not the prêt-à-porter.

It started as a hobby for some fashion-forward and fashion-aware partisans, but it grew to the scale of strong influencers who take first row seats at some of the most prominent fashion shows around the world. That is – it all started with The Sartorialist's Scott Schuman, one of my favorite fashion street bloggers of all times, who - by the way - used to be a stay-at-home dad.

Scott Schuman and Garance Dore - a street fashion blogger-couple.

Now it’s fashionably fashionable to spot, photograph, and write about the street fashion. And it made some amateur names of your friends you used to share a conversation about street fashion over a cup of coffee into some of most regarded and influential names in the fashion industry. Just to name a few: Bryan Grey-Yambao (Bryan Boy), Scott Schuman (The Sartorialist), Garance Dore, Yvan Rodic (Facehunter), Rei Shito (Style from Tokyo), and the list goes on...Some of them, believe it or not, had other professions before turning into street fashion photographers. For example, Vanessa Jackman used to be a lawyer before turning into a photographer...(I wonder if she gets paid as a photographer, as much as she did when she was a lawyer?...)

From designers and personal stylists to fashion magazine editors and celebrities, everyone logs in hours online checking those street fashion bloggers who just happened to having taken up the web space earlier than the others. (You can’t blame Malevich for drawing "Black Square" way before we could claim that we could do it just as well too.)

A model and a blogger HANNELI - does her own blogging, photography and styling for Vogue.com

With a mere knowledge of web design, photo downloads/edits, and an average use of digital cameras, those women and men - some of whom are even still in school - now influence the top people in the fashion world, not to say billions of regular people, like us. 

Singapore, by Style from Tokyo

Today’s the fastest fashion reporters are everywhere we are: - they no longer restrict their work to the offices, they actually go to the streets to spot us, to shoot us, and to let the rest of the world know what's hot and happening in the city. 

Paris, by The Sartorialist

Milan, by The Sartorialist

New York City, by The Sartorialist

Even though the street fashion bloggers not only know what cities to go to photograph fashionable people – Milan, Tokyo, Moscow, Paris, New York - they also know what neighborhoods attract the fashionable crowd the most. Schuman, for example, likes to shoot in the East Village, Chelsea and Soho parts of New York. Within just a few hours (sometimes sooner) these bloggers snap and post photos on the Web that are then viewed by millions around the world. 

Even the most fierce and influential woman in today's fashion world - Anna Wintour, the Editor-in-Chief of America's Vogue - look into the bloggers to see if there is "anything" they've missed. This is what she said about Bill Cunningham - the man behind all those street fashion columns in The New York Times' Style's "On The Street" column: “If he is not taking your pictures, then you might as well be dead. We all get dressed for Bill.”

Street fashion by Bill Cunningham. Source: here.

Some might say that these way-too-fast-for-print-media street fashion and trends bloggers are causing misbalance within traditional fashion trend-spotters - they are making trouble for magazines and newspapers, which is often mentioned by the editors of the fashion magazines. On the other hand, their outreach to regular people makes them very likeable – but at the same time, competitive. They definitely keep those fashion industry moguls on their toes.

New York City, by Tommy Ton for Jack and Jil blog

Not only the low-end/mid-end outlets like H&M, Zara, and Century 21 look for inspirations on the streets (and blogs), but even the high fashion designers - the likes of Marc Jacobs and Stella McCartney - look for what’s out there on the streets that so strikingly fresh and hip before anyone else can catch it. But what it all comes down to liking these street fashion bloggers is that real people are interested in real people. It’s that simple.

Paris, by Hanneli Mustaparta

Here are some of most popular street fashion bloggers of today (by the homebase country):

Berlin, by http://thelocals.dk/

USA, The Sartorialist

Copenhagen, Copenhagen Street Style

Tokyo, Style Arena

London, Glam Canyon

Berlin, Stil in Berlin

Paris (recently moved in with her NY boyfriend Scott Schuman to NYC), Garance Dore

Tel Aviv, The Streets Walker

Buenos Aires, On The Corner Street Style

Sao Paulo, Freak Style

London, Stylescout

London, Face Hunter

Beijing, Stylites in Beijing

Moscow, Slick Walk

Munich, Style Clicker

Asia, Bryan Boy

Athens, Street Geist

That reminds me, it’s lunch time and it means – it’s time for my dose of The Sartorialist. Watch the philosophy behind his work here:



For my take on street fashion, check out DC Street Fashion.

Care for the hot and happening anklets or

perhaps 

La Marinière as suggested by the very French-turned-New-York-'It'-Street-Fashion-Blogger-Girl Garance Dore?



Garance Dore at work: