7lifefeatureTTTHHHEEESSSUUUNNNDDDAAAYYY IIINNNDDDEEEPPPEEENNNDDDEEENNNTTTAAAPPPRRRIIILLL 000777 222000111333

FFFOR DECADES, peoplehave looked to the cat-walk for fashion trends,but with the rise ofphoto blogging, thestreets of the world’sbiggest cities have be-

come an integral part of the fashionstory. The men and women behindthe lenses are the storytellers. Theyare known as street style bloggers.

Their subject: no longer justskinny models and big-name design-ers, but ordinary people, whetherthey are dressed in Chanel or cheapfinds from city bargain bins.

You may be familiar with nameslike Scott Schuman of The Sartori-alist blog, his girlfriend and some-times business partner GaranceDore, and Tommy Ton ofjakandjil.com. Locally, names likeMichelle Oberholzer, MalibongweTyilo and Trevor Stuurman come tomind, as does Ed Suter, who lastyear released a book titled SharpSharp, chronicling his street styleadventures through the streets ofthe country’s biggest cities.

In the Western world – specifi-cally fashion capitals like New York,London, Milan and Paris – wherethe street style photography culturehas become a phenomenon – maga-zine editors who were previouslyunknown to the rest of the worldhave become cyber celebrities, oftenposing to have their pictures takenbefore they enter the fashion weekshow venues.

This has given rise to a trendknown as peacocking, where indi-viduals dress up specifically to getshot by popular street style bloggers.

But while some revel in it, someare increasingly expressing fatigue.It has become what New York Timesfashion editor Suzy Menkes refers toas “the fashion circus”.

“It’s empowering in a funny way.But it’s empowering in the sameway that reality TV is empowering.It makes monsters; it doesn’t makegods,” says Style.com fashion criticTim Blanks.

Blanks is the main commentatorin a documentary recently shot byGarage Magazine and titled TakeMy Picture.

It provides rare insight into whathappens outside fashion week ven-ues in the world’s fashion capitals.

Fashion editors can be seen, attimes, posing but more often thannot taking cues from the photogra-phers who are screaming: “Walkthis way. Stand right there,” amongother things, as they aim for the per-fect shot.

Others can be seen walking asfast as they can trying to get awayfrom the glare, but how can youwhen there are so many cameras?

“Watching the hysteria of allthese people,” Blanks laments, “Ijust (think) someone is gonna getrun over, someone will be tram-pled.”

He adds that there was a timewhen he found the street style blog-ging appealing: “I thought it wascharming. I thought for so many dif-ferent kinds of people to be so enthusiastic about fashionis good for the industry.This season I thought: ‘Oh,enough’.”

In South Africa, despitethe fact that almosteveryone you meet atfashion weeks callsthemselves a blog-ger, street stylephotography isnot as muchof a phenome-non.

When yougoogle “streetstyle”, few localresults come up.

Yes, the cam-eras are thereclicking away butyou’re alwaysleft wonderingwhere thesepictures arepublished.

E v e nwhen certainblogs do pub-lish pictures,you’re leftthinking: “Is thisit?”

One editor, whowill remainanonymous for thepurposes of this article,

said to me that browsing throughthese blogs feels like browsingthrough a retail catalogue.

When the famed SartorialistSchuman payed a visit to MercedesBenz Fashion Week Africa last year,the excitement over his attendancesoon turned to disappointmentwhen the fashion set

realised he was-n’t exactly

filling uphis blogw i t hp o s t s

from the front rows of the Africanfashion spectacle.

When Women’s Wear Daily toldhim local fashion lovers were com-plaining about his apparent lack ofinterest in them, he replied: “I’veonly met a few people here I’vemaybe wanted to take pictures of.Johannesburg reminds me of a lotof cities like Moscow, Buenos Aires

and in Poland,places that had

some kind of po-litical or eco-nomic difficulty,or they were ac o m m u n i s tcountry for a

long time… Alot of thewomen hereare veryb e a u t i f u l ,very perfectin every way,but it lacks ac e r t a i namount ofcharm.”

T h e s ewords set

Twitter time-lines abuzz and

left many feelinginsulted. How dare

he say that when webreak our backs try-ing to put our bestfeet forward? Butcould there be some

truth to what hewas saying?Do SouthA f r i c a n s

just lack charm when itcomes to style? Is this why goodblogs that are documenting

South African street style are hardto come by?

Local bloggers disagree.“South Africans definitely do not

lack style,” says Oberholzer, who isbased in Cape Town. Her cinderand-skylark.com blog is seen by many asone of the few real street style blogsin the country. There aren’t many,like her, who stand for hours on thestreets, scouting for that specialsomething in ordinary people.

“The word ‘charm’ is but oneway to describe style. There are alsosimple, classic, contrasting, under-stated, eccentric and many others,”she adds.

“Every city has somethingunique to offer. I think that in gen-eral it’s easier to perceive ‘style’when someone is wearing lots oflayers and accessories like people doin the northern hemisphere.

“In a country like ours, where itis hot nine months of the year, lay-ered and accessorised dressing isnot always possible.

“Like everything else in a devel-oping country, our sense of fashionand style is developing and growingalong with everything else and I findthat very exciting.”

Malibongwe Tyilo says: “I’m notsure what he was looking for. In myview, there is more than enoughcharm at Fashion Week. There’s alot of charming and edgy streetstyle that comes out of FashionWeek and I think a lot of it repre-sents the place we’re at as a creativecommunity.

“There’s a lot of friction, a lot ofcontradictions – one just needs tokeep an open mind. Sometimeswhen Europeans or Americans visitour country they have preconceivednotions of what they’ll find in

Africa, so they struggle to see us forwhat we are.”

Although Tyilo is often cate-gorised alongside Oberholzer as astreet style blogger, he doesn’t seehimself as one.

“My blog focuses much more onevents,” he says. “Yes, I do featurethe clothes people are wearing at theevents, but I wouldn’t call it streetstyle as what they are wearing is de-fined by the event they are attend-ing. Plus, I also focus on capturingthe vibe of the event.”

As to why he doesn’t conform tothe street style categorisation, Tyiloexplains: “Actual street style is a bithard to find. To be fair, we’re a fairlyconservative nation, so while youmight find the occasional ‘out there’kind of person, the streets are gen-erally a lot more about blending inthan standing out. I wish there weremore people pushing the bound-aries.”

He adds that he looks for individ-uals who take risks. “I like a bit ofdanger – something that could havegone completely wrong but gotsaved by the wearer’s sense of style.Although sometimes, I’m just after abeautiful outfit that looks fresh or isworn in a fresh way.”

Elle Magazine’s street style re-porter Trevor Stuurman says healso looks out for the risk-takers.“Fashion is art and art is entertain-ment,” he says.

“I look out for individuals withoutfits that have powerful elementsof design, for example beautiful bal-ance and clashing contrasts of tex-tures. When an outfit is well put to-gether it all has to tell a narrativeand that is what I look out for – beau-tiful fashion stories on the street.”

On finding these stories, Stuur-man admits that it often proves dif-ficult. “It is challenging. SouthAfrican street style culture is stillvery young (and) not everyone isopen to being stopped for a quickstylish snap.”

He also cites South Africa’s lackof a functional public transport sys-tem as a probable contributor to thedifficulty of finding stylish peopleon the streets. “A large number ofstylish people don’t walk or usepublic transport, so it’s tough to spotpeople on a day-to-day basis.”

Perhaps this is where Tyilo’s por-traits of people at art exhibitions,Friday night jamborees in bars andnightclubs and other social gather-ings come in. Style exists in allkinds of places and it certainly isn’texclusive to the confines of the fash-ion industry.

Street style and social style pho-tography blogs prove this. To bor-row from Stuurman – a style democ-racy is what it’s about.Elle’s style reporter, Trevor Stuurman, was the man behind the lens here.

Malibongwe Tyilo’s stylish blog is called Skattie, WhatAre You Wearing?

This photo comes from Michelle Oberholzer’s blogcinderandskylark.

Even grocery stores are a hunting ground for TrevorStuurman and his camera

Above and cover: Pretty prints and blue shirts caught MichelleOberholzer’s eye on the streets of Cape Town

Blogger Michelle Oberholzer

It’s popular in Europe and America, but not so much in South Africa. That might be because we have no public transport to speak of, writes SSSaaannndddiiisssooo NNNggguuubbbaaannneee

StreetStyle

Blogging

Eclectic street style