Look sharp: Your style could show up on a blog

Around the world, camera-toting commentators are looking for someone with a zeal for fashion; a certain dresser with a little je ne sais quoi.

These eagle-eye scouts aren't magazine editors or paparazzi. They're just ordinary — but increasingly influential — folks with blogger accounts. And they're watching you.

The Web-savvy amateur fashion editors look for inspiration beyond that provided by mainstream fashion magazines. The photos on their sites aim to capture everyday style representative of a time, city, neighborhood or even block where the subject was photographed. While street fashion isn't a new concept — fashion magazines such as Nylon have covered it for years, as have the snarkers at Vice — interest has risen with the popularity and accessibility of blogs.

"I had always been into Japanese street-fashion magazines ... so it was inspiring to see that someone had taken that format and translated it into a blog," said fashion blogger Matthew L. Gates, a 24-year-old literature major at the City College of San Francisco and fashion-boutique sales clerk.

Along with three friends, Gates photographs smart dressers in San Francisco, dishing out local fashion do's for his Street Fancy blog (www.streetfancy.blogspot.com). Street Fancy started in August 2006 and gets more than 11,000 visits a month, many from local art students looking for inspiration.

For Seattle resident Jasmine Park, a love for fashion and some city patriotism provided the inspiration for Pike/Pine (www.pikepine.com). Like Gates, the program manager at Microsoft doesn't come from a fashion background; she was an English major in college.

"People don't expect Seattle to be fashionable," Park said. "I want people who look at my blog to say, 'Oh, Seattle is a pretty progressive city.' "

Park favors a mix of cheap-chic and luxe items. "I really admire an outfit that doesn't cost a lot but still requires a good eye to assemble," she said.

While these blogs reside on the Web, their reach has outgrown the computer screen. Park, 27, recently judged a style contest sponsored by Seattle Metropolitan magazine. Another blogger, Scott Schuman, has parlayed his site The Sartorialist (thesartorialist.blogspot.com) into regular gigs for GQ magazine and style.com, the online arm of Vogue and W magazines.

Kate Betts, editor in chief of Time magazine's quarterly Style & Design publication thinks street-fashion blogs are positive influences on design that are here to stay.

"Street fashion has always been important, and this is another medium that's absorbing it," said Betts, who chose the Sartorialist blog as one of the magazine's top 100 design influencers this year. She adds that beyond fashion blogs, social networking sites such as MySpace and Share Your Look are also expanding the influence of street fashion. On ShareYourLook.com, members are encouraged to post photos of their outfits and rate each other's looks.

"[The fashion industry] can get so insular," Betts said. "They're only interested in how it looks on a magazine page, not how it looks on the people. But the most important thing is the people: how they're wearing it and who they're wearing."

Margaret Voelker-Ferrier, a University of Cincinnati professor of fashion design, says there's strong interest in these blogs among art and design students and young designers, but calls the phenomenon "the latest flash in the pan."

Voelker-Ferrier thinks their influence is slim on mainstream fashion editorial. "People think fashion is from the street, but it's not," she said. "It's from the designers who are using the streets for inspiration. So at the end, it's still coming from the designers."

Whether the bloggers are making a difference in showrooms or editorial meetings, Park thinks the blogs are inspiring creativity in people's everyday clothing choices.

"People have been able to find a lot of content online to inspire them," Park said. "Before blogs, people like me only had fashion magazines to turn to."