I don’t remember clearly how I found out about The Sartorialist, but I think it was while reading Teen Vogue in college, when he was featured as an up-and-coming blogger in the magazine. Little did I know then that the man whose blog I followed so enthusiastically and saw as an inspiration, would one day become one of the foremost authorities on fashion blogging. It has been over three years since I starting logging onto his website daily and last January I even bought myself a DSLR to go about clicking pictures of spruced-up Indians, but unfortunately I haven’t found many people who can match up to the standards set by observing The Sartorialist’s photographs.

For someone who started his photography blog by posting pictures of people who dressed well on the streets of Milan, Paris, London and New York, giving rise to a horde of followers and a completely new genre of fashion photography—street style photography—must have seemed like a far-fetched gag. But to be named one of the most influential blogs in fashion by Time magazine is no mean feat.

I have never met or seen Scott Schuman in person, but I have seen a documentary that featured him as the subject and filmed him in action, as he clicked pictures of people he thought were well dressed, showing how the blog is updated daily and giving the viewer a sense of how or why he selects someone to be the subject of his portraits, which is mesmerising to say the least.

His subjects may range from fashion editors to unknown people, from students to construction workers. The website has featured elegantly dressed, yet unknown, men and women and made them internationally-renowned internet fashion sensations. So much so, that some of the individuals featured on his website now have innumerable blogs dedicated to them. Anna Dello Russo, Japanese Vogue’s editor at large, for instance, now has her own blog that she manages and has just launched her namesake perfume.

Apart from covering street style, Mr Schuman also covers all four fashion weeks. From being one of the photographers who stood outside fashion shows, documenting the style of men and women attending the shows, he has now gone to covering the shows from the front row itself. Not only this, his blog today also features fashion news that has created enough hype to affect the industry. From the unexpected exit of the former editor of French Vogue, Carine Roitfeld, to voicing his opinions on John Galliano’s spectacularly shocking anti-Semitic rant, Mr Schuman now has enough clout to unleash an online debate amongst his cult followers.

Posted by : Saanya Khanna at 10:20 AM

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