Getting dressed is big business.  In Australia chainstores like Sportsgirl release mini-seasons every four to six weeks – where shiny silk party dresses designed with Christmas parties in mind are quickly replaced with the burnt oranges and paisley prints of a seventies summer revival.  Early next month tough-love British styling duo Trinny and Susannah will arrive in Australia to host a series of live styling events based around their uber successful What Not To Wear TV program that has spawned everything from holiday specials (not a tie-dyed sarong in sight) to ‘The Rules’ and ‘The Body-Shape Bible’. Hell even the Olsen twins have their own style advice printed and encased in a colourful hardback cover.

So it’s refreshing to have an alternative voice in fashion documentation emerge online, aided by the proliferation of blog sites like blogspot and flickR.  Free and accessible, the advent of these blog hosting sites have enabled the creation of highly personalised journal-style blogs and a fashion free for all. 

The Sartoralist is the epitomie of street style documentary.  After 15 years of working in fashion marketing, New Yorker Scott Schuman was ready for something more organic and fresh.  He writes on his blog that he was beginning to notice a real disconnect between the high-end fashion he was selling in showrooms and “seeing real people (really cool people) wearing it in real life,” and The Sartoralist was born. Updated regularly, he posts photos of stylish folk he spies in his travels.  Maybe it’s a tiny yellow flower tucked into the buttonhole of a pinstriped navy suit, unusual layering, clashing patterns of plaid and stripes or a general attitude that piques his interest.  Beautifully photographed (all subjects are willing and somewhat posed, this is no paparazzi snap-shot), his composition and use of depth-of-field often rival who and whathe is photographing.  With a penchant for Dandies, New York boys with attitude and their equally cool Parisian counterparts, it’s unsurprising that his online success has tricked back into mainstream media, with a monthly spot in US GQ magazine and regular write-ups in Vogue. 

On the other end of the spectrum are the 7,000 plus members of wardrobe_remix, a fashion collective hosted byYahoo’s photosharing site flickR who don’t wait to be spotted on the street but take and post their own photos online, complete with a rundown of where each item of their outfit is from. Tricia Royal, a 32-year-old freelance fashion designer and fashion/craft writer started the site in 2005, when she was studying fashion at the prestigious Parsons School of Design in New York City (whose alumni includes Donna Karan, Tom Ford, and Narciso Rodriguez and is currently featured on the reality TV-show Project Runway).  She describes it as a “DIY street fashion community” inspired by Japanese street fashion magazines like Fruits that documented the bold, unique and experimental fashion of the Japanese Harajuku district.  A huge part of the Harajuku subculture is the display or exhibition of these incredible clothing ensembles in a highly public place.  wardrobe_remix functions in a similar way, with the Internet enabling an online promenade of outfits with participants from around the world.

The rules are simple – no nudity, no children under 16, no professional or model shots and photos must be full-body shots that show off an entire outfit.  It’s purely a community for real people who are keen to share their everyday clothing choices.  Royal is fiercely proud of the fact that wardrobe_remix is not a rating community.  “Never has, never will be,” she says, “It’s about being positive and proud of oneself and supporting others in their fashion choices.”

Royal thinks the online forum works for two main reasons.  “A little ego-stroking is going on,” is her first attribution.  “People love to show themselves off, they are proud of who they are, and they want to show that off.  Others are looking for feedback, reaction, adoration…and with the community being so large, they get what they want.” In this way, she makes it sound a little bit like the ‘mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest one of all?’ of Snow White.  Voyeurism is another element of the sites success, particularly for those too shy to post or with an interest in fashion. According to Royal, people “want to see something they have never seen before, they palpably yearn to see other people find new ways to wear things.” Royal is most interested in play and experimentation when dressing herself and loves “to see people whose distinct, original and amazing personality and soul comes through in the clothes and accoutrements they chose to put on the outside of their bodies.”

Francesca, or the Snail & The Cyclops as she is known on wardrobe_remix, posts consistently thoughtful and gorgeously girly outfits online, a fascinating entry point into her life in the States.  On President’s day it was a floaty silk lemon day-dress and black opaques for the 21-year-old as she hung out by the river, spending time in her Grandma’s attic she wears a 1950s style navy dress with a nipped in waist and accessorized with bright red lipstick, black and white pumps and a cream silk scarf.  A day spent exploring the library with a friend and photographing old illustrated books for girls called for a black high-waisted pencil skirt, a sheer white blouse and patterned navy silk scarf tied to make an oversized bow. 

“I really like the idea of dressing for occasions and coordinating my outfits accordingly,” she says.  But it’s more playful than pragmatic, “I recently found this silly little 50’s day dress with pink giraffes on it and I keep daydreaming about a visit to the zoo!” She jokes that she was a long-time wardrobe_remix lurker (“I was feeling a little creepy about the amount of time I spent looking at the photo pool…") before finally ditching her shyness and posting her own pictures.  “There are so many girls doing such nice things with trends,” she says, “It inspires me to put my own twist on them.  When I’m out shopping and reaching for yet another black skirt, I think, ‘Oh! Remember that belt so and so was wearing the other day?!’ I really hope I’m doing the same for other posters too!”

Margot Riley is a dress historian who completed her postgraduate studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and now works as a researcher at the Mitchell Library in Sydney.  Riley loves a recycling clothes challenge and at a recent eco-fashion talk and parade at the State Library of NSW she showed off intricately woven clutches and hats that the had painstakingly made from rags and old-bread bags.  A vintage clothes enthusiast she pointed out that the status of recycled clothing is evolving and is becoming increasingly fashionable, no longer viewed as a hand-me-down practice of the poor .  For Riley, this resurgence in recycling clothing is one of very few fashion trends accessible across the social strata. 

Unlike the abundance of ready-to-wear clothing available in mainstream stores around the world, vintage fashion place the emphasis back on the individuality of the wearer.  It’s not so much about buying but styling an outfit and using pre-existing clothing as a way of expressing personality.  Riley is refreshingly playful when discussing her studies in vintage fashion, recycling methods and most recently, a positive spin-off from these practices – eco-fashion and sustainability.  Her message? Remixing existing clothing from previous decades, or even clothes swapped with friends or snitched from our mother’s wardrobe is not only fun and creative, but a necessary practice to ensure fashion becomes more ecological and sustainable. 

[Photo used with permission from The Snail and the Cyclops ]