Take Back the Streets

I just read this interesting piece on fashion blogs and street style, which I think lightly touches upon in surge in the DIY fashion reporting and street style trendsetting of late (um, yeah, I realize I started this blog mere weeks ago). Since it's written for a small paper, the focus is very local (see Pike/Pine for an excellent example), but with the internet in everyone's home nowadays, what really is local? We have access to pics of actual people everyday from Paris, Israel and Singapore, just to name a few. Bringing the power to the people, bloggers can spark trends, spread them and reject them. Yet, there are haters:

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."

PLEASE! She says herself that designers use the streets for inspiration. While I think style beheamoths Vogue and the like will only have a passing fancy for street style, the influence of democracy-thru-internet is undeniable. That's why independent businesses selling clothing and accesories are popping up everywhere and that's why people like Scott Schuman are pronouced "design influencers."

P.S. DC is also representing street style on the internets. Check out Pandahead, Project Beltway and Outrageously Chic.

**EDIT: OK, I am not so sure how local the piece is supposed to be as it's an AP piece, but originally running in the Seattle Times (thus, not a wire piece they picked up).