Continuing our trip to the online fashion world, after talking about a major fashion e-tailer last week, today we are going to talk about an outstanding fashion blog.
The blog The Sartorialist (http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com) has become a real “authority” in the online fashion world, both in the usual meaning of authority – an expert in his field – and in the internet theory definition of “a network member with a large number of inbound links”.
The Sartorialist is an innovative street-style blog grounded in finding and showcasing style. Last year, Time Magazine even named it as one of the Top 100 Design Influences.
Scott Schuman, the creator and driving force behind The Sartorialist, worked in fashion sales and marketing and even opened a showroom in 1999. However, he ran into trouble after Sept. 11. He closed the showroom in 2001 and began to focus more on photography.
One day, Schuman ended up on an interior design blog and was inspired. He felt blogging was a good medium to share his photographs and his point of view, one that was unique yet understandable.
The idea is simple: Schuman uses his Canon 5D to take photos of ordinary people strolling the streets of the cities around the world. He’s based in New York, but he is always travelling to cities such as Paris, Milan, Moscow, New Delhi and Rio.
Now, over 90,000 people a day visit his blog. There’s nobody in the fashion world that does not go there once in a while. Each picture can be commented by dozens or sometimes hundreds of visitors. The blog has several frequent visitors, who post comments everyday, and also some people who appear in the photographs with some regularity – normally people from the fashion industry that he meets in fashion events around the world.
“The Sartorialist now seems bigger than me,” Schuman said. “I write a little about my point of view, take pictures, but I leave it to the audience.”
Being selected and photographed by Schuman has become an international stamp of aesthetic approval, a kind of certificate of style in the 21st century global world. Some people sent their own pictures to the blog, which are promptly deleted. Only Schuman has the gift to choose, shoot and make people famous for 15 seconds.
Please post your comments: if Scoot Schuman came to LBS to shoot, who do you think he would choose?
