Yvan Rodic and The Sartorialist

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Tuesday 19 October 2010
Ron Brownson

Fashion and photography are inseparable. Just as sport and photography are utterly in accord. In fact, fashion could not even exist without photography working as both its marketing and research tool.

You might argue that fashion exists solely because of photography’s ability to present comparisons between how people utilise their attire as an expression of how they live their life. Photography proves that fashion is always in the ‘look’.

Ages ago, social demographers in the form of ‘cool hunters’ commented that fashion begins in the street rather than inside a Parisian sanctuary belonging to some famous couturier. Start looking at the photography of Yvan Rodic and you will immediately see that fashion has become very reactive to contemporary photo-reportage. By existing half way between documentary and fashion photography, Yvan’s images make personal style the key characteristic of contemporary costume.

Yvan’s blog is one of the most influential fashion blogs. It is well mannered so I expect that we will soon see more punk rampant (to quote Shakespeare’s take) visual alternatives. Nevertheless, this is a fashion essential:
http://facehunter.blogspot.com/

Elle magazine published a feature on How to Become Hip in 15 Steps. The first step was “Have your photograph taken by Facehunter.”

As an online persona of Yvan Rodic, Facehunter is shifting how fashion is promoted by photography. He has recently published an edgy book:
Facehunter – Yvan Rodic, London, Thames and Hudson, 2010.

In America, Yvon’s discoveries has a parallel in the photographic work of
http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/

As the much-accessed blog of Scott Schuman, The Satorialist is equally streetwise. Scott notes: “I thought I could shoot people on the street the way designers looked at people, and get and give inspiration to lots of people in the process. My only strategy when I began The Satorialist was to try and shoot style in a way that I knew most designers hunted for inspiration.”

What started as an innovative and independent project, has now reached centre stage. Isn’t Satorialist such a rad word? Hardly used nowadays, most people would not know that it is actually focuses on the tailoring of men’s clothes.