New York City has long been a vibrant playground for diverse personalities, and during Fashion Week, the streets are teeming with street style that is equal parts inspiring and aspirational. Thought of as a smaller-scale melting pot, New York is just that. It’s a place where trendsetters from all walks of life collide and express themselves through their fashion and beauty. And yes, much of the street style is so unique it won’t make it off the runway of New York or be a common trend year-round, but no one can deny it; there’s just something so liberating about seeing people freely express themselves. It’s a fantastic reminder of the power of individuality and optimism! Sure, it’s quite possible that some of the fashion and beauty will make it big. But when it boils down to it, the street style at New York Fashion Week is ahead-of-the-curve inspiration and, above all, it’s art.
Our society has always had an obsession with street style. After all, what we wear can be read like a book, revealing which subcultures we identify with, what music we listen to, what sports we play, what actors or movies we might like, and which social, economic, or educational class we belong to. Street fashion draws inspiration from thousands of years of cultural norms, belief systems, access to different materials, social hierarchy, and so much more. But instead of trying to explain why people choose to dress the way they do, we’ll let you take a peek into the gritty, art-filled streets of New York, where people will be expressing their artistic flair and wearing their influences on their sleeves. Doing it all through photography, a discipline of solitary observation and creation, participating in a form of visual storytelling.
The Evolution of Street Style in New York
Harlem and the Lower East Side. Little Italy and Alphabet City. Hell’s Kitchen. Park Slope, soaring with art galleries and brownstone ambition to match. Williamsburg gleaming with an influx of smaller boutiques. All of these neighborhoods, and far more, are in the global spotlight, thanks to New York City. By dressing everyone from extras in a film to people who live in public housing, they created the phenomenon we now know as fashion week street style. Street fashion is most often associated with sunny Los Angeles or buoyant 21st-century Tokyo. However, the New York City timeline shows the genre has deep local roots and a cadre of people responsible for its creation.
Street fashion in the Big Apple was born of retail, torn, reshaped, and percolated through different neighborhoods over the last 40 years. Little surprise given the city’s history as a subcultural haberdasher’s closet. Over these 40 years, the most successful street style was often a liberation from the previous trend’s material costs — a chance to let the flowers in, get clan-like, smile the smile of punk or hip-hop iconography, or swaddle in borrowed ideas from film or neighborly cool. These fashion movements also served as a kind of me-too-ism on a local level, where you could signal what block you identified with, and from a distance you could be pro-to-mid-Tribeca or the East Village. Iconic fashion was protests, too, in other words. They yelled at you behind sunglasses. And yet they grew and changed, expanded, luxurious and violent, and bled into each other. These were the city’s truly democratic form of fashion. Because we had the numbers, we had the bodies, and most importantly, we had talent — we just didn’t have occupation. Then came the era of digital documentation.
Key Elements of New York Street Style
New York couldn’t possibly look to a single locale or decade for a wardrobe signature. No, the city style is a boiling pot, at once global and micro-local. Tourists try on shearling in SoHo, bag espadrilles from a street vendor, sip matchas in designer dresses at the edge of Chinatown. The heroine of the Upper East Sider’s most trendy novel might make a scene storming down Madison while an East Harlem teenager might dress in vintage to visit her grandmother.
There is, though, a shared dressing logic. Outfits for a day of mix and match sightseeing in Washington Square Park might just as easily parlay into drinks in a cocktail bar that’s existed behind a secret door for generations. Even when there isn’t a good reason for all the layering—a tourist might dress to visit multiple environments in the same day—these citizens wear for pause and play. On the elements of layering, the intention comes into focus: everyone cares. York looks down rain on suede sneakers. Eye-searing white mules slush through surprise rain. Wintertime perfumes? Unique. Pocket-square fold to a pastel murmuration. Springtime maxis tied up just-so against slippery heeled boots. Optimism. One actress made the most of a sunshine yellow trench, its attractively asymmetrical tie delightfully askew between frayed denim and shag jacket. By exhibiting that we are ever putting our best foot forward we are saying: I intend to be seen at my best no matter what unexpected obstacles come my way. I will climb every mountain, ford every river in these slip-on sneakers. I will tie up my parachute skirts out of the way. I am ready. And of course, the motorist in the next level personifies the supremely ambitious flipside: I wear what I want with a nonchalance undermining the steamroller of fashion posing as street style.
Fashion Trends
As street style photographers swarm to New York for the start of fashion month, fresh sartorial phenomena are appearing before our eyes. This should come as no surprise; fashion has a notorious habit of evolving in line with wider global events and social shifts. What’s more, social media has only quickened a trend’s cycle from slow burn to mass-market saturation. Where once just a very few shows would broadcast their collections to eagle-eyed buyers and press at fashion weeks, now various platforms can spread the word much wider to the digital world. Indeed, New York, considered a meeting point at the crossroads, has been trumpeted as the coolest city for a while too and, so, without further ado, let’s discuss what some of those trends might be, with a particular focus on the clothes.
The importance of this subject? Fashion isn’t just restricted to trends on the catwalks; it reflects the energy and values of an entire culture. Many of these fashions are recycled from the 1980s. The 1980s were interesting in the sense that life could be prosperous and miserable at the same time. During this period, there was a sustainable fashion movement and an increasing concern for the environment. Celebrating the trend of oversized silhouettes could be a way of finding joy in the mundane. Many New Yorkers love their individuality and are very proud of their sense of fashion. Tourists are curious and want to capture photos of plugged-in New Yorkers. Some tourists come to learn about New York’s fashion districts, while others have great knowledge about it via social media and have thus set out to visit to get first dibs on new pieces and visit the home of some of their favorite brands. Instead of learning, they long to experience it. Social media has drastically revolutionized fashion and shortened the lifespan of several trends. Events like New York Fashion Week give people a glimpse of what the latest trends are and get them excited to create their own looks and purchase the latest fashion during a particular season. In a clinical sense, fashion works in cycles and will likely continue to do so. But the more fashion bloggers, influencers, and fashion icons there are, the quicker these trends will emerge and evolve.
The Intersection of Beauty and Fashion
Street style and beauty have always gone hand in hand. Whether it’s the color of one’s hair or a full face of makeup, these beauty choices complete any look. Hair, makeup, and accessories are all a part of grooming, which is the personal extension of style — just like the clothes you wear. From a cultural perspective, one could also argue that hair, and to a greater extent makeup, are more tied to beauty trends and mirror shifts encountered by the fashion industry. Just as the collections matured and new silhouettes and fabric manipulations were painstakingly considered, what we see on the street also becomes a part of a casually ingrained aesthetic dialogue between genders, influences, and indeed the globe.
Clearly, the world of beauty is undergoing a similar kind of revelatory surge as that of fashion. It’s an auspicious time for makeup. You know how we in fashion always pull anecdotes from the street? We’ve all sorts of weird habits in high fashion, just because it’s conversational. Beauty has that same magnitude in the market, and it is being exhibited more intricately by pernickety ambassadors of commercial elegance that have shallower pockets but wider mediums. Each street star is putting out looks like new signings, or similar players put in similar places.
Influential Street Style Photographers
When discussing a continually evolving and multifaceted fashion movement, the depth of detail required is nearly impossible. Nevertheless, to be surrounded by its vibrant presence is simply a witness to what it represents: reinvention and art in its purest form. The influence of neighborhoods and artistic figures leaves an indelible effect on citizens who continuously incorporate these characteristics into their ensembles, showcasing their cultural identities. With major changes to fashion and culture in the last part of the century, the twenty-first century began as a constant re-evaluation of past cultural statements. Globalization brought world style and perhaps a global culture of style, with a strong influence of technology and digital culture. The future is unpredictable, but the New York streets are sure to inspire its inhabitants to deliver creativity and give birth to a new chapter in this ever-changing fashion narrative. From an elucidation that described and explained the nature of New York street style, one has been exposed to the changing fashion trends that continue to traverse the city. The underlying features of any trend makeup have been discussed, as well as how they have been influenced by various regions, socio-economic factors, racial and ethnic backgrounds, and cultural history. Finally, with a positive note, the future has been discussed – what is to come in the creativity of the streets of New York – and what the past has confirmed in its “sartorial voice.” The changing expressions and diversity of the New York urban fashionista force one to gain insight into how the individual creatively presents culturally diverse accessories and attire. Ultimately, New York street style will always dignify and inspire.
