Harper’s Bazaar. Vogue. Teen Vogue. We’ve all been there, whether it be subscribing to the fashion glossies, browsing through them in a long line-up at the drug store, making fun of the free copies the Trent bookstore has been giving out or being subjected to looking at them as they stare back at you from their racks. Keeping up with fashion, style and trends can be a stress-inducing task for some, as we are so often bombarded by visual cues that tell us this is in this week and that is in the next. Maybe, just maybe, we’ve been looking at the wrong places for inspiration. Toss the glossies aside, turn off entertainment news and get online. As fashion journalist, Karen Kay, of the UK-based Daily Mail said in her column, “These days, to have one finger on the fashion pulse, you need to have the other one on your computer mouse, reading (or writing) the latest blogs.”

Upper Photo: Street style photo take from MTL Street. Lower Photo: A typical street style photo, taken from The Pregnant Goldfish. 

Harper’s Bazaar. Vogue. Teen Vogue. We’ve all been there, whether it be subscribing to the fashion glossies, browsing through them in a long line-up at the drug store, making fun of the free copies the Trent bookstore has been giving out or being subjected to looking at them as they stare back at you from their racks. Keeping up with fashion, style and trends can be a stress-inducing task for some, as we are so often bombarded by visual cues that tell us this is in this week and that is in the next. Maybe, just maybe, we’ve been looking at the wrong places for inspiration. Toss the glossies aside, turn off entertainment news and get online. As fashion journalist, Karen Kay, of the UK-based Daily Mail said in her column, “These days, to have one finger on the fashion pulse, you need to have the other one on your computer mouse, reading (or writing) the latest blogs.”

For the past five or so years, online street style blogs have burgeoned into a large community, making up a meaty portion of themed blogs. Street style blogs are exactly that – blogs that document styles off of the street. These blogs are generally created and run by individuals who are armed with a camera, a computer and a penchant for varying styles. Because of geographic constraints, most street style bloggers document styles of a specific region, ranging from Seattle (http://www.pikepine.com/) to Copenhagen (http://www.copenhagenstreetstyle.dk/) to Berlin (http://stilinberlin.blogspot.com/). Many of these bloggers go about their day-to-day business with their cameras kept close at hand, as they know intriguing and inspiring styles are everywhere. The general process of content-creation of street style blogs goes like this: photos are taken, uploaded and shared with readers. There tends to also be a general philosophy behind the creation and upkeep of street style blogs.

It’s a difficult task, trying to find the word “fashion” on many of these blogs. The preferred word-of-choice is “style.” Fashion often indicates trends that have been deemed “in” by elite industry personnel. Style, on the other hand, refers moreso to personal modes of expression. This may very well mean donning whatever is fashionable at the moment, but may also mean sampling a bit from the catwalks and a bit from your grandpa’s wardrobe. For many street style documentarians, it is essential that recording “style” (which is always changing and evolving) remains at the heart of thier work.

However, as Marilis of Montreal-based Pregnant Goldfish (http://pregnantgoldfish.wordpress.com/) pointed out, the reason why she uses blogs as her medium of choice is because “it allows us to play [things] by ear and do whatever we want with it. [We can] create our own rules on how a photo should be displayed or what we want to say about an outfit or the photo in general. We’re the ones who run it.”

Juxtaposed against traditional glossy magazines, blogs outshine by far. As Izzy of MTL Street (http://www.mtlst.blogspot.com/) points out, online blogs are free (that is, if you have access to a computer and after you’ve paid your Internet and electric bills, unless you are of the steal-wireless-Internet persuasion). Waste is minimized and you can keep the seven or so dollars for the coffees you’ll consume while reading the blogs.

More interesting, however, is the way street style blogs have become a source of inspiration not only for readers like myself, but for big-shot fashion designers who reside in New York, Milan, Tokyo and London. It is well-known that top fashion designers get their overworked, underpaid minions to obsessively scour street style blogs to find inspiration and ideas for their next collection. This is because, I speculate, as Marilis states, “Street style is in no way orchestrated, style or planned” and therefore, does not follow a specific palette of taste and style.”

Street style doesn’t just end with blogs; participatory communities such as wardrobe_remix (http://flickr.com/groups/wardrobe_remix/) exist to allow bloggers to upload photos of their daily wear to a photo-sharing community. Tricia Royal (http://bitsandbobbins.com/), creator of wardrobe_remix, started the community with a simple philosophy in mind – “I believe the best stylists walk the streets, not the photo sets, nor the backstage of the runways. The real innovators are you and me.” With over 6100 members in the community, wardrobe_remix attests to the snowballing effect of the documentation of street styles.

Street style blogs are slowly undermining the power of traditional glossies as more and more style-savvy ones choose to browse street style blogs for stylistic inspiration, dabbling a bit here and taking a bit from there. Hey, why not start posting your own photos on wardrobe_remix or even start a street style blog for Peterborough?