Fashion blogging

by Tara MacInnis

February 25, 2010 9:00 AM

Inspiration can come from many sources, and as the world becomes more and more connected and we have access to more information than we’ll ever need, these sources are increasing. No longer is the modern fashionista limited to the people around her for outfit ideas when street-style from Milan is just a click away.

Fashion blogs are about so much more than looking at pretty pictures and catching up on the industry. Fashion bloggers take readers to places all over the world, and capture what inspires them personally so it can inspire everyone.

Fashion bloggers are quickly gaining respect in the fashion world, with invites to sit in the front rows of fashion shows and features in magazines as huge style-influencers. Below are some examples of fashion and street-style blogs that stand out.

The Sartorialist thesartorialist.blogspot.com

Probably the most famous and highly acclaimed of all fashion blogs is Scott Schumann’s The Sartorialist. He is a beautiful photographer and is known for not only capturing unique outfits from around the world, but also the emotion in his subjects and how they react to their environments.

Just about every day, Schumann posts photos from his travels to fashion weeks, photo shoots for GQ and Vogue, and personal interviews. Readers can follow him around the world, and view his photos and written entries from cities like Milan, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Paris and Melbourne. It also helps that the occasional photo of Schumann lands on his blog, because he looks like he fell out of 1950s Oscar-winning film.

Garance Doré garancedore.fr

Ms Doré, whose original profession was an illustrator for magazines, incorporates her talent for drawing with photography and French commentary to fill the pages of her blog. Luckily, for those of us who do not speak French, readers can view her blog in English also.

Doré’s commentary is witty and has a very natural feel, almost like she is having a casual conversation with her readers, and her photographs are beautifully lit and full of vivid colour. She visits many cities much like Schumann (who happens to be her significant other), taking photos of her fabulous friends and filming fashion shows and interviews.

Street Peeper streetpeeper.com

Street Peeper Phil, as the creator of Street Peeper is known, visits London, Paris, New York, Melbourne, Tokyo and Seoul to bring his readers snapshots of what he sees on the streets of each city. Most of his photos are full body shots, which makes it nice and easy to take in every element of an outfit, and he lists where each item the subject is wearing came from.

Although Street Peeper makes outfits seem a little less attainable because Phil’s subjects are the sort of people who open their closets and say, “which YSL jacket am I going to wear today?”, it is still a really great place to start a blog-reading habit.

LOOKBOOK.nu lookbook.nu

This blog, which prides itself in “collective fashion consciousness,” is very different from those formerly mentioned. It is run by an unidentified couple from San Francisco, and while it is a street blog, the creators of the blog do not post the photos.

Readers are invited to submit photos of themselves, and then each look is voted for and sorted according to how many votes it receives. A lot of the readers who submit photos have their own fashion blogs, but LOOKBOOK is a great way to see the best of all these bloggers, and gain feedback on your own style via personal submissions.

Style Rookie tavi-thenewgirlintown.blogspot.com

It’s very hard to believe that this blog was created by American 14 year-old Tavi Gevinson, due to the fact that she writes ridiculously well. She is extremely insightful, quirky, hilarious and unique, presenting her views on fashion with incomparable honesty.

A lot of the photographs on Gevinson’s blog are of her, and while this may seem narcissistic, look and you’ll see that it shouldn’t be any other way. She shows her readers how she takes colours and textures from photographs and translates them to outfits. Gevinson somehow receives the privilege to attend the most prestigious events in the most fantastic outfits, and was recently featured in Vogue Paris. Keep an eye on this young sensation.

NAST nast-magazine.fr

Although this blog is written in French only, everyone knows that the French are undeniably fashionable. And there is no such thing as language barriers in photography. The layout of NAST is nice and simple, with photos running down the middle and links to chronological sets of photographs along the right hand side.

The colour in each of the photos seems to accidentally work perfectly, since they are taken randomly of people on the streets of Paris. The blog was created only a year ago, by a Parisian woman called Sophie. A Parisian taking photographs of Parisians is genius. Parisians pretty much come out of the womb looking fabulous, so it’s quite hard not to be captivated and inspired by what they wear.

While these are only a few of the thousands of fashion and street-style blogs on the web, each can inspire readers in its own way. So if you have time over reading week, check each of these out and discover new ways to have fun and express yourself through what you wear. If you don’t have time over reading week, make time. The results will be far more stylish than what spending time on your thesis will produce.