Monday, October 17, 2011

Business of Fashion Interviews The Sartorialist

“You can really make a living out of this,” said Schuman emphatically. “It’s tough, but if you work really hard you can create a business, if you’re smart about it and have something real to say.”


Scott Schuman of The Sartorialist- Photograph by Garance Dore via Business of Fashion

With high-profile campaigns for Burberry and DKNY Jeans, a best-selling book, and a place on TIME magazine’s 2007 list of Top 100 Design Influencers, Scott Schuman is the streetstyle blogger that paved the way for hundreds of others who have followed in his trailblazing footsteps. For the fashion flock, being shot for The Sartorialist website is still the ultimate badge of honour.

But Mr. Schuman’s influence is felt far beyond the blogosphere. His beautifully framed photos, which feature fashion insiders and football fans alike, now appear on mood boards in design studios around the world. His photographic style has inspired countless advertising campaigns and editorials.

According to Mr. Schuman, The Sartorialist was originally inspired by Brooklyn-based writer Grace Bonney’s interior design blog Design Sponge. “I could tell she was doing it by herself and I liked the idea that she was having an interaction,” he said. “She had like 30 comments on a post and I thought that was really cool.” Schuman decided to start a similar blog for fashion after examining a series of photos he had taken of a few stylish guys in New York’s Fulton fish market while on a photography course.

Mr. Schuman began thinking about his blog more deeply. “At the very beginning I had to decide: do I want this to be a blog about fashion, or do I want it to be an artistic photographic thing? I kept going back and forth. At some point I think I finally decided that I didn’t want to be a magazine. I decided to take a more photographic route.”

Schuman cites as inspiration the photography of documentary style cameramen like National Geographic’s Steve McCurry, the man behind the now-famous June 1985 cover photo featuring an Afghani girl with haunting sea green eyes. Looking at Schuman’s photos, you can sense that he is trying to capture the inner spirit of his subjects, not only their fashion sense. “I’m not reporting on a bag; who’s carrying what bag and who’s wearing what dress. I’m not reporting on people,” he explained. “What I am looking for is a certain grace.”
Read the full article at The Business of Fashion...



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