Words: Ana Kinsella
The first time I visited Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn, something took me by surprise. A tall, skinny girl with long dark hair sashayed in front of me with an iced coffee in her hand, teetering on stupidly-high Jeffrey Campbell booties. “God,” I thought. “She looks like… she looks almost like a fashion blogger!”
Not any fashion blogger in particular, of course. More like a Platonic form of a fashion blogger that I had never encountered in real life, but had grown familiar with via flicking through my Google Reader every day. The curious thing about the internet and its capacity for infinite content is that it has actually led more to a kind of endless sameness. From city to city, where previously we had indigenous fashion tribes and one-off boutiques, now we have a million identigirls in Acne Pistols and Isabel Marant. (Or Forever 21 knock-offs with the same result, really.)
OK, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. But certainly the sheer scale of street style online has done something to change how fashion functions. It’s become more of a spectacle than ever before. I left a Burberry Prorsum show in Hyde Park once, writing some notes in my phone, and got shouldered into by a pair of smiley street style photographers. Tommy Ton, of Jak & Jil, and Phil Oh, Mr Street Peeper, are like the fraternal twins of street fashion.
They jostle around outside shows laden down with lenses, waiting for editors and models to emerge so they can grab the best shot. And after a few seasons of hanging around, they’ve transformed from eager irritants to respected professionals, now working for clients like Vogue and GQ. Of course, more and more they’re competing with a flock of amateurs with SLRs trying to follow in their footsteps. “Magdalena!” I heard one of them shout at a giraffe of a model strutting towards a waiting cab. “Magdalena, pretend to be on your phone! Talk to the phone!” The model complied, and a beautiful staged “candid” shot was produced, uploaded and reblogged across the internet.
