Street style refers to styles of dress observed and documented in everyday public spaces, particularly in urban settings.
Scholarship on street style examines the relationship between individual dress, local or subcultural style groupings, mainstream fashion, and fashion media. Street-style photography and blogging have also become part of the fashion industry, influencing how trends and urban fashion scenes are represented.
Description
Street style is often discussed as a form of everyday dress through which individuals construct and communicate identity. Jessica Neumann's study of fashion and identity argues that clothing can function as a means of self-expression and agency, while also reflecting broader cultural and social influences.
Street style is also shaped by the relationship between individual dress and mainstream fashion. Sophie Woodward's study of young people in Nottingham found that street styles often incorporate high-street fashion, local style groupings and individual outfit choices, challenging the idea that street style exists entirely outside commercial fashion.
Street-style photography has played an important role in documenting these practices. Photographer Bill Cunningham photographed clothing worn on the streets of New York for The New York Times for several decades, helping establish street-style photography as a recognised form of fashion journalism.
Development Street style became increasingly visible in postwar urban youth cultures, where dress and appearance were used to express group identity and distinction. Studies of urban style cultures have linked street fashion to subcultures and to processes in which styles originating among youth and marginal groups can influence wider fashion production and consumption.
From the 1950s onward, youth subcultures and countercultural movements developed recognizable styles of dress and body presentation. Examples included teddy boys, mods, skinheads, punks, b-boys, goths and ravers. These styles functioned as markers of belonging within youth cultures and contributed to the development and diffusion of street fashion.
Fashion photography also helped establish the street as a setting in which style and identity were represented. Eugénie Shinkle has examined how postwar fashion photography increasingly connected urban space, youth culture and everyday dress, including changing representations of masculinity and femininity. Street-style photography Street-style photography developed recognizable conventions within fashion media during the late 20th century. Bill Cunningham's On the Street photography for The New York Times and the head-to-toe "straight-up" portraits published by the British magazine i-D became influential reference points for the genre. The latter documented punk and New Wave styles in London through photographs of people encountered in streets and other everyday settings.
Sportswear and skateboarding Sportswear has influenced street style as garments originally associated with athletic activity have been adapted for everyday wear. Ingrid Loschek notes that items such as trainers, leggings and other forms of activewear became incorporated into street fashion, where they came to signify youthfulness, comfort and an active lifestyle.
Skateboarding has also contributed to street-based styles of dress through its association with particular forms of footwear, casual clothing and subcultural identity. Skate culture has interacted with broader street culture through clothing, branding and the visual presentation of skaters in urban spaces.
Japanese street fashion Japanese street fashion provides a prominent example of youth-led street style. Sociologist Yuniya Kawamura has argued that Japanese teenagers, particularly young women, have played an active role in producing and disseminating fashion trends through networks of youth subcultures, retailers, magazines and other fashion institutions.
Historical studies of Japanese street style have also identified distinct postwar youth groups associated with particular urban locations and forms of dress. Hiroshi Narumi examines groups including the Roppongi-zoku, Miyuki-zoku, Harajuku-zoku, Futen-zoku and bōsōzoku, comparing aspects of their styles with British youth subcultures such as mods, hippies and punks while noting differences between the Japanese and British contexts.
Street style blogging and digital media The growth of fashion blogging in the 2000s increased the visibility of street-style photography online. Street-style bloggers photographed people in public spaces and published the images independently, blurring distinctions between amateur and professional fashion photography and between participants in the fashion industry and observers outside it.
Street-style blogs also became part of the wider fashion media landscape. Karen de Perthuis has examined street-style blogging as a form of fashion photography, including the commercial and editorial processes through which photographs of everyday dress can construct fashion narratives around clothing and individual style. The development of digital fashion media later extended many practices associated with fashion blogging onto social-media platforms, including Instagram.
Street-style photography also became closely associated with fashion weeks, where photographers document attendees and fashion-industry participants outside runway venues. Brent Luvaas's ethnographic research at New York Fashion Week examines this environment as part of the professionalization of street-style blogging, in which distinctions between amateur photographers, professional fashion media and commercial activity became increasingly blurred. References
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