Fashion editors are the new celebrity, being stalked by street style photographers at every turn. Nowadays, photos of famous fashionistas can sell for up to $1000 dollars, according to the Business of Fashion. This is making street style photography a highly professional, and popular gig. During the fall 2011 season shows, there were hordes of fashion photographers lining the street outside of the venues, trying to get the perfect photo of Anna Wintour or Anna Dell0 Russo (Editor at Large for Vogue Japan, pictured right).
Photographing street style of famous fashionistas is nothing new. I trace the world’s fascination with streetstyle back to Bill Cunningham. The New York Times photographer has been peddling his bicycle down Fifth Avenue taking photos of well dressed people for decades. His first set of photos for the newspaper featured Greta Garbo and was published in 1978. This was the first time the Times printed photos of famous people without their consent. Cunningham paved the way for modern streetstyle photographers, like Scott Schuman of the widely read blog the Sartorialist.
What is new is the viciousness of the photographers. They pushed each other and got in the way of editors, who were just trying to get to the next fashion show on time. The sheer number of photogs makes a real nuisance for the sometimes unwilling photo subjects. And I feel the same way about these intrusive photographers as I feel about celebrity paparazzi who attack A-listers–they should give them some space.
While I am a sucker for streetstyle photos, there is almost too much of it these days. There’s Tommy Ton, Street Peeper, and Facehunter, not to mention the street style sections on major fashion magazines’ websites, like Vogue, Elle, and Nylon. There’s also sites for everyday people to join, like Lookbook, that let you upload your own photos and be judged on your ensemble making prowess. Everyone seems to have jumped on the bandwagon, and it’s getting a bit tiresome. So to those people who feel the need to snap a photo of that girl in the awesome outfit–make sure it’s something really unique, and not just adding to the clutter.
Jonesing for Fashion 