Street photography has been a thing for, like, a really fucking long time, going all the way back to those swagless black and white days when color didn't even exist yet. But street style is a whole other beast and has only been around for about a decade and in the past few years become a straight up phenomenon. Some people love it, some people hate it and plenty of people would be happy if it no longer existed whatsoever. Now, with what seems like the end of an era, Racked took it upon itself to document the birth, life and inevitable death of street style, from the alpha to the omega so to speak.
It takes us from the birth of capturing stylish women on the streets in 1905 to the Take Ivy days of the '60s that have since become inspiration for so many menswear designers before rounding the corner to the modern age where Bill Cunningham and Amy Arbus began to define and hone the "street style" genre. Naturally, shit picks up quick and hard when The Sartorialist, aka Scott Schuman, made his mark. Then there's the one and only Tommy Ton whose shots are considered some of the best street style of late '00s, which also seems to be right around where the backlash—the critical dismissal of peacocking and the general circus-like atmosphere of fashion weeks across the globe—began.
Let's be real, as long as fashion weeks are going down, people want (need?) to see who is wearing what almost as much as they want to see the actual clothing on the runway. That's the established paradigm and I'm not sure a shift, no matter how called for, is in the cards anytime soon. So, will street style ever die? Not as long as George Elder keeps cashing those checks.
