Invasion of the bloggers: how the fashion hack-pack is changing

Who are all these unknown people taking thousands of street style pictures every fashion week, compulsively staring at the clothes of every person who walks by? What do they hope to achieve?

Photographers crowd into the Lincoln Center during New York Fashion Week last month.

As gorgeously attired women stride purposefully towards the entrance to the fashion tents at the Lincoln Center for New York Fashion Week, they pass a horde of people sitting on fountains, standing on steps and leaning against pillars, all clasping giant digital SLR cameras, ready for their money shots.

Not that there's much money changing hands: most of these street-style photographers, present at every fashion week, are bloggers, working for themselves and either dreaming of being the next Sartorialist (Scott Schuman, the proto-street-photographer whose blog earns him at least a quarter of a million dollars a year in advertising alone) or simply enjoying the spectacle. They're certainly not making a living.

There are the regular faces, of course: the dapper photographer Guerre is ever-present and, like Schuman and other big-name street-style snappers such as Garance Doré (Schuman's girlfriend) and Tommy Ton, shoots for glossy magazines and websites - and his immaculate style ensures he ends up on plenty of street-style blogs himself.

Just as a few years ago journalists hunkered down in response to the explosion of blogging, now many old hands at blogging are sniffy about the newbies coming up behind them. Schuman was recently quoted in an interview for The Talks as saying of the 15-year-old star blogger Tavi Gevinson: "To me it is like a five-year-old Michael Jackson singing about love - to him they are just words. It is just an abstract concept. One of the other problems of many blogs like Tavi's is that they are people who write about fashion, but in order to have a visual element, they steal pictures from other people."

It's understandable that the old hands should feel disgruntled: for many professional photographers, this is the job that pays their rent. The increasing levels of hysteria outside the tents during the last few seasons are adding a bitter edge to the mood and it is the amateurs that get grumpily blamed. Those shots of Anna Dello Russo or Anna Wintour or the star models can bring in big money from newspapers, but the scrum can turn the atmosphere oppressive and even aggressive, making it hard to get the shot.

So apart from the famous successes, just who are all these unknown bloggers taking thousands of pictures each day, compulsively staring at the clothes of every person who walks by? What do they hope to achieve, and how do they choose their subjects?

If I sound baffled, it's because, working with The National, I, too, have stood in the numbing cold outside fashion shows with a photographer, urgently scanning the crowds for street shots worth taking for our pages. The results are worth it, but it's definitely not fun. If I weren't being paid, I wouldn't do it.

This season, I braved the cold once more but instead of seeking wackily dressed weirdos, I picked out the most dedicated-looking bloggers outside the Lincoln Center and London's Somerset House, and asked them why they were there.

First off, a severe Australian in New York called Shirin Borthwick. All black-bobbed and dark-clothed, she has been doing photography since 2009 and this is her fifth season covering fashion week for her blog blackmarketboo.com. "I love fashion week because it's easy to capture amazing looks, but I put more of a value in capturing people out and about who aren't on trend, who are just very original," she says. "I really like when people make things clash but it succeeds because they unify the clashing elements. And I'm into bright colours and mixing old and new."

Although she treats everyone nicely at the shows, because "I know exactly what it's like to be starting out, and it's a very intimidating beat", she does notice a different approach from other generations.

"I think the older people, especially the older men, who have been doing it since the year dot, can be a bit rude and competitive, but I think they have more at stake - it's their bread and butter, whereas the younger street photographers are just starting out and happy to help each other."

As for the much-feared street-snapper aggression, she's on the fence: "I wouldn't push anyone out of the way or anything like that. And sometimes when you're running for the same shot, you don't want that shot anyway because everyone's going to get it."

Elsewhere in the square outside Lincoln Center is a less likely looking fashion photographer: Judith Ebenstein has gone for a drab and practical look (wise, given the temperature), topped off with a woolly hat. It seems unlikely that she has been picked out as a street-style subject, but that's not what the retired psychiatrist is here for.

"I'm interested in people, and this is my retirement passion," she explains between shots of a woman staring intently at a BlackBerry. "What I try to do is take photographs of people and get into their souls. The funny thing is, I've been doing a series of subway musicians and I thought, well, I'm running out of subway musicians so let's try this. I'm not interested in fashion."

It's Ebenstein's first day, but already she has noticed the peculiar dynamic of the fashion crowd and their photographers. "The thing that struck me most today is how predatory all the photographers are. I'm very conscious as a psychiatrist that I'm stealing something [when I take someone's picture] and I worry about that, but I don't think these people are worrying about that. It's very clear that a lot of the prey are really enjoying themselves."

Also creating a personal project, but from a very different angle, is Atlanta-based Meredith Howard, whose web address, findingsoulbalance.blogspot.com, gives some idea of her preoccupations. A long-time fan of Schuman, Doré et al, she started photography as a creative outlet when she felt that her life revolved only around motherhood. "This is purely for fun," she says. "I got into it really to find my soul balance. It pushes me to do things I wouldn't normally do, like come here, talk to people I wouldn't normally talk to, try to become a better photographer."

Without a vested interest in street style's success, she is honest about her views on the genre's future. "I think it's started to get over-saturated and I'm not sure what's going to happen at that point. It was so new and fresh, and it really did affect the fashion industry, but now I don't know where it's going to go. I don't know if bloggers will drop out because there are so many, and I don't know if it's as profitable as they thought it was or as glamorous."

Juan McQuillion, a hair stylist who is shooting for theepaularenee.com, thinks the opposite. "I see it growing every year that I come here. Bloggers and street fashion, a lot of people are influenced by that; it's like taking the place of magazines, top magazines like Vogue and Elle, and people are closer to bloggers."

She has no problem with people who come to fashion week purely to see and be photographed. "People wanna be seen," she says. "With people in fashion, the thrill of dressing and people stopping and looking, that's it: it's a work of art. For someone to admire the piece that you put together."

Over in London, two street-style photographers have little respect for the genre's crowd. Laura Waiser, who has just graduated in fashion from Barcelona, and Pio Rodriguez, whose website mariacarlainwonderland.com got him invited to the Burberry Prorsum show and who begins his fashion degree this year, both feel that London is the best place for street shots.

"I think it's more interesting to go to Camden and watch the really strange punk rockers and how they do something, because that's where it all starts: someone sees it then fashionistas start wearing it in a fashion way," says Waiser.

Rodriguez adds: "Today we were at St Pancras International and we just sat in chairs and looked at people. And it's interesting; you find a style of people who don't care about fashion but they have that outsider thing that's very interesting."

He, meanwhile, is already something of an insider at just 18, and already has a world-weary approach to fashion bloggers. "I'm snobbish. I really don't like bloggers," he says. "They are very snobbish, they think they're the best, that they're press, but they're not: you're actually doing something you like but you're not getting paid."

Waiser adds: "When something becomes interesting everyone wants to do it." It's simple, but it's the obvious explanation. And isn't that almost the definition of fashion?

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