As an avid follower of fashion, I spend hours poring over and analyzing every image that comes off the runway. So attending New York Fashion Week was a dream come true.

When I arrived at Lincoln Center, the site of the show, I felt like I had arrived at a red carpet event rather than a trade show for the fashion industry. A sea of photographers crowded the plaza in front of the complex, feverishly snapping shots of every eye-catching shoe, bag and hairstyle that flitted by.

This is the world of street style, a form of fashion photography that has recently reached mania-like popularity. It isn’t exactly a new art. The New York Times fashion columnist Bill Cunningham has been shooting street-style fashion since the 1960s. But when the fashion industry began embracing blogging as a veritable media outlet in the mid-2000s, street-style photography found its niche.

In an interview with New York Magazine, street-style photographer Candice Lake of All The Pretty Birds called her work ‘portraiture in four frames.’ Street style allows anyone to step into the fashion spotlight. The focus turns away from the robotic models parading the latest look down the runway. Instead, the individuality of everyday people shines through an accessible platform.

Today, most fashion news blogs and magazine websites have a street-style column. Scott Schuman, author of street-style blog ‘The Sartorialist,’ is one of the biggest names in the fashion industry thanks to his stunning portraits of ordinary people with extraordinary style.

In the past few years, this phenomenon has taken on a life of its own, as indicated by the circus that fashion week has become lately. In theory, fashion week is a great place to shoot street style. Who wouldn’t want to see trendsetters like editors and buyers in their natural environment?

But the popularity of these websites makes these fashion insiders stars now, and street style has veered from highlighting the beauty in the mundane — average people with great style — to celebrating the luxuries of the privileged. After all, most of these bloggers have access to gowns, bags and shoes that cost thousands of dollars.

For example, Vogue Japan Editor-at-Large Anna Dello Russo is a street-style star famous for wearing avant-garde looks right from the runway. She can afford to be stylish, and yes, the images documenting her style are fun to look at. But for people without a budget conducive to a lavish lifestyle, checking out the blog is the same as opening up a fashion magazine and looking at a high-concept fashion shoot: fantasy.

Even worse, street-style images are becoming less and less authentic. They’re made to look spur-of-the-moment, but attendees of fashion week know there’s a sea of cameras waiting for them to step out of their cars. Fashion week is now as much about getting noticed as it is about seeing the shows.

There’s nothing wrong with dressing to get noticed, but when you stop dressing for yourself and start dressing solely for attention, it makes you no better than the models who are made up beyond recognition and marched down the catwalk. You become a manufactured illusion.

It’s time for street style to revert back to the real world. There’s enough artificiality in fashion magazines and on runways already — I want to see regular people expressing their individual tastes, not some editor dressing up for the camera. It’s time to take the art of street style and give it back to the stylish people on the street who actually deserve it.

Julie Kosin is a sophomore magazine journalism major. Her column appears every other Monday. She can be reached at jkkosin@syr.edu. Follow her on Twitter at @juliekosin. 

Published on March 4, 2012 at 12:00 pm