\n
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Rebecca Halliday\u00a0|\u00a0York and Ryerson University<\/p>\n
HOMOGENIZING THE CITY\/ RE-CLASSIFYING THE STREET:
\nTommy Ton\u2019s Street Style<\/em> Fashion Show Photographs<\/h4>\nThe Italian fashion editor Anna Dello Russo perches on a red motorbike. She sports a sweater dress and a quilted leather purse in a near-identical shade, emblazoned with what appears to be McDonald\u2019s \u201cgolden arches\u201d logo but is actually a doubled signifier for the Italian brand Moschino (Fig. 1). Dello Russo\u2019s look debuted during Fall\/Winter 2014 Milan Fashion Week, where Moschino\u2019s collection received criticism for its mix of high and mass culture icons. However, the sole clue that this photograph has been taken in Milan is the motorbike, a common mode of transportation in Italian cities; the name Deloitte, the international financial firm, is visible on mirrored windows that reflect brick facades. This photograph is one of 386 images that Canadian-born Tommy Ton captured of attendees at the Fall\/Winter 2014 presentations and posted to Cond\u00e9 Nast Media\u2019s Style.com<\/em> under the banner street style<\/em>. The \u201cBig Four\u201d Fashion Week circuit refers to the biannual showcase of women\u2019s ready-to-wear collections in New York, London, Milan, and Paris\u2014the complete series is termed Fashion Month. From 2009 to 2015, Ton captured thousands of photographs of the outdoor scenes of Fashion Month, in addition to Paris Couture Week and smaller-scale fashion weeks in other international cities.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Fig1_020714_Tommy_Ton_rtw_Fall_2014_slide_180.WEB_.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Fig. 1<\/p>\n
In a phenomenon known as the street style parade<\/em>, in-house and freelance photographers\u00a0 compete to document attendees\u2019 and models\u2019 ensembles as they enter and leave Fashion Month venues. Street style blogs, the medium from which this spectacle arose, claim to capture the fashions of \u201creal\u201d people on the streets of international cities. Following the medium\u2019s rise to popularity in the mid-2000s, fashion publications offered photographers lucrative contracts to contribute street style images from Fashion Month to enhance collection reportage. This article examines Tommy Ton\u2019s photographs for Style.com<\/em> to interrogate the media representations of fashion show attendees and the class politics communicated in the metropolitan streets on which Fashion Month materializes. I contend that these photographs, and their inclusion in press content, appropriate the contested term street style<\/em> as a site on which to inscribe fashion\u2019s elitist social, material, and embodied ideals. I further scrutinize depictions of Fashion Month cities to situate the clothes within fashion\u2019s internationalization under neoliberalism. Fashion\u2019s consecration of the Fashion Month insider photograph as palimpsest has disconnected the medium of street style photography from its (tenuous) ideals of candidness. The photographs\u2019 circulation via professional websites and media outlets has rendered the sartorial choices of fashion\u2019s arbiters arguably more influential than collection photographs and has blurred distinctions between the fashions worn in the indoor and outdoor environments. Jennifer Craik describes a form of \u201cglobal high fashion worn by fashion journalists, stylists, and celebrities who travel worldwide to attend fashion weeks and special fashion events\u201d (354). It is this subset that cultural parlance terms street style<\/em>. Ton\u2019s aesthetic utilizes streetscapes to promote this internationalized mode of dress that communicates wearers\u2019 status not just in fashion circles but as members of a larger cultured class. Cities function as status enhancers within a discursive system that privileges beautiful clothes and bodies. Elements that do reveal location, such as historical landmarks, function within existent cultural discourses to promote cities as idealized fashion capitals<\/em> (or fashion cities<\/em>) and tourist destinations (see Gilbert).[2]<\/a><\/p>\nThis article is part of broader research situated in fashion, media, and cultural studies: this research examines the mediation of the fashion show as a microcosm of online media\u2019s effects on consumer culture and assesses the social discursive production of fashion shows and their attendees via diverse textual and visual platforms. It is crucial to contextualize Ton\u2019s photographs as embedded within the academic and social histories of the discursive terms and practices that they appropriate. Furthermore, one must account for the production of cultural and aesthetic ideals specific to the cities in which these representations are located, including intersections with other aspirational branding and consumer practices, such as those of tourism.<\/p>\n
I first outline the methods used to analyze Ton\u2019s photographs and defines a theoretical conceptualization of Fashion Month as scene. I then document Ton\u2019s rise to prominence within fashion\u2019s industrial structures. Further, I describe how the mobilities of Fashion Month within dominant cities enact fashion\u2019s condition of internationalization. Next, I offer a scholastic genealogy of street style<\/em> to illustrate the class and racial tensions in which Ton\u2019s discursive representations circulate. Further, I summarize research in street style photography as both photographic genre and material practice, contextualized within historical representations of modern cities and fashionable subjects. Ton\u2019s photographs demonstrate\u2014and are situated within\u2014a persistent dialectic between \u201creal\u201d or \u201cauthentic\u201d depictions and fashion\u2019s editorial or commercial dictates: this dialectic reflects international cities\u2019 contestations in the cultural positioning of urban environments and class-based and\/or racialized constructs of the \u201cstreet.\u201d<\/p>\nMethods<\/strong><\/h5>\nI performed manual content analysis on a non-random sample of all of the photographs that Ton posted to Style.com<\/em> during the Spring\/Summer 2014 (n=339) and Fall\/Winter 2014 (n=386) ready-to-wear women\u2019s collections, for a total of 725 photographs (n=725). The breakdown of cities is as follows: Fall\/Winter 2014\u2014Paris (44.3%), New York City (27.7%), Milan (17.9%), London (10.4%); Spring\/Summer 2014\u2014Paris (47.8%), New York City (24.2%), Milan (16.5%), London (12.1%). To obtain an accurate count of cities depicted, I cross-referenced the photographs with the archives on Ton\u2019s personal website, which names the locations.[3]<\/a> Paris photographs comprise almost half of the sample, suggesting that Ton either attended more fashion shows or preferred to take more photographs there; this statistic also attests to Paris\u2019s dominance as a fashion capital (Rocamora).<\/p>\nGillian Rose\u2019s Foucauldian approach to visual discourse analysis intersects Ton\u2019s photographs with related media discourses and aesthetic and embodied trends predicated on an elevated class echelon. Rose\u2019s notion of social modality<\/em> considers the \u201ceconomic processes\u201d and \u201csocial practices\u201d that inform the production of visual materials (24-31). Central to reception is the element of compositionality<\/em>, the presentation and relation of items (22). Agn\u00e8s Rocamora\u2019s formulation of fashion discourse<\/em>, or fashion media discourse<\/em>, combines Bourdieu\u2019s symbolic value production and Foucault\u2019s relation of discourses to institutional structures in order to read representations of Paris and other fashion capitals and of the persons that inhabit these cities.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\nThe Fashion Month Scene<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis article applies a Bourdieusian lens to the material and social structures of Fashion Month and to the consumer distinctions communicated in fashion show attendees\u2019 sartorial choices. Joanne Entwistle and Agn\u00e8s Rocamora, pace<\/em> Bourdieu, describe Fashion Week as a literal manifestation of the field of fashion<\/em> in which cultural intermediaries<\/em> compete for cultural, social, and economic capital (736). This formulation parallels Will Straw\u2019s characterization of scenes<\/em>:<\/p>\n\u00a0[A]s collectivities <\/em>marked by some form of proximity; as spaces of assembly<\/em> engaged in pulling together the varieties of cultural phenomena; as workplaces<\/em> engaged . . . in the transformation of materials; as ethical worlds<\/em> shaped by the working out or maintenance of behavioural protocols; as spaces of traversal<\/em> and preservation<\/em> through which cultural energies and practices pass at particular speeds, and as spaces of mediation<\/em> . . . (477)<\/p><\/blockquote>\nFashion Weeks coalesce the industry\u2019s social relations and material practices: audience risers create a Foucauldian \u201cregime of looking\u201d\u2014a reverse Panopticon\u2014in which members that possess the most influence are seated in the front row, visible to others (Entwistle and Rocamora 744). Insiders\u2019 display of personal fashion capital<\/em> constitutes a performance of habitus<\/em>, sets of tastes<\/em> and dispositions<\/em> that Bourdieu identified as the product of class position (Entwistle and Rocamora 740). What can productively be called the fashion scene<\/em>, or the Fashion Month scene<\/em>, is rendered visible on an international scale and in an immediate timeframe via online photograph circulation. Bourdieu\u2019s hierarchical theorization of consumer culture has its critics: Gilles Lipovetsky declared that the introduction of multiple markets facilitates individual choice, while Mike Featherstone posited that consumption in postmodern culture should be evaluated based on tastes. Subculture research, outlined below, further indicates alternative directions of fashion adoption. However the press\u2019s increased focus on fashion show attendees indicates fashion\u2019s reassertion of class-based hierarchies in the Internet era. Cultural intermediaries must appear<\/em> to other field members, through their dress and embodiment, to possess appropriate economic capital, design knowledge, and professional connections (Entwistle and Rocamora 746). Consumers who access Fashion Month photographs perceive attendees as representative of an elite class, and their ability to travel to international fashion capitals as evidence of financial flexibility and industrial clout.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nThe Rise of Online Street Style Photography<\/strong><\/h5>\nOnline street style photography became a recognized practice through the work of photographers such as Ton, Garance Dor\u00e9 (Garance <\/em>Dor<\/em>\u00e9<\/em>), Phil Oh (Street Peeper<\/em>), Yvan Rodic (Facehunter<\/em>), and Scott Schuman (The Sartorialist<\/em>, who photographed for Style.com<\/em> from 2006 to 2009). These photographers documented international street fashion, purporting to capture cities\u2019 sartorial experimentation. Photographer and ethnographer Brent Luvaas contends that street style blogs\u2019 \u201ccultural value\u201d resides in their illustration of \u201cspecific cities at specific moments in time \u2026 well beyond the traditional boundaries of the global fashion industry\u201d (4). Print and online street fashion photographers have earned their reputations touring cities with a casual, all-seeing approach that scholars liken to the flaneur<\/em> of the Parisian arcades. Fashion and visual culture scholars have written on Schuman and Rodic\u2019s portraiture as demonstrative of the form. Popular claims of street style blogs\u2019 democratic nature are predicated on online media\u2019s geographical reach and interactive capacities (including comment forums); depictions of clothes from different price echelons; and the fact that bloggers earned professional notice through amateur practices. However, scholars problematize such utopian ideals, noting the promotion of a homogenous aesthetic that adheres to fashion\u2019s limited embodied standards. Further, fashion\u2019s stakeholders exerted an influence in the medium from its earliest incarnations via brand collaborations, advertisements, and invitations to practitioners to attend fashion shows.[4]<\/a><\/p>\nTon\u2019s position as one of the earliest online street style photographers facilitated his rapid rise to influence in the field of fashion and the formation of an international forum for his work. Ton created his blog Jak & Jil<\/em> in 2005 while working as a buyer at the luxury department store Holt Renfrew in Toronto (Amed). Canadian retailer Lynda Latner, impressed with Ton\u2019s online work, paid for Ton to travel to Paris Fashion Week: there, Ton honed a \u201ccandid\u201d and frenetic photographic style that differed from his peers\u2019 portraiture (though he does shoot portraits) (qtd. in Amed). Still in his 20s, Ton was not as established in fashion as predecessors such as Schuman, who had worked in menswear (de Perthuis 4; Rosser 158). Nonetheless, his position at Holt Renfrew reinforces the fact that several street style visionaries already worked in fashion prior to starting their recreational online pursuits. In 2009, Ton was one of four bloggers invited to sit front-row at Dolce & Gabbana\u2019s Spring\/Summer 2010 presentation, a moment that scholars pinpoint as fashion\u2019s consecration of the medium. That same year, Cond\u00e9 Nast hired Ton as its \u201cresident\u201d photographer of Fashion Month street style (replacing Schuman). During Ton\u2019s tenure, the street style parade<\/em> became a documented phenomenon. Nicole Phelps lists Ton\u2019s recruitment as a catalytic event before street style exploded in the form of bloggers\u2019 increased Fashion Month presence and the pervasive influence of brands and media sites on the practice. The seasons covered in the sample represent street style photographers\u2019 dominance in the streets of Fashion Month, later to be outnumbered by press and commercial photographers (Luvaas 284).<\/p>\nTon\u2019s photographs for Style.com<\/em> demand analysis, as those few scholars that have addressed his work situate him within street style photography but do not examine his oeuvre in detail. In 2011, The Business of Fashion<\/em> deemed Ton \u201cthe world\u2019s most influential street style fashion photographer<\/em> today\u201d (Amed, my emphasis). Luvaas cites Ton as a creator of street style stars<\/em> (270). Other photographers observe whom he shoots, and his chosen intermediaries gain public recognition\u2014Dello Russo, who appears 22 times in this sample (at least with her face discernible), is the foremost example (Titton, \u201cStyling the Street\u201d 132-33).[5]<\/a> Furthermore, Ton\u2019s aesthetic has become representative of street style photographs and is often used as a visual referent for the term itself. Style.com<\/em> is not the sole outlet to publish Fashion Month photographs under a street style <\/em>banner: however, it is (or was) an essential resource that contains news stories, product recommendations, and a comprehensive database of collection reviews and photographs.[6]<\/a> Announcing his departure, Ton praised the site as \u201cthe most influential and relevant fashion publication\u201d (qtd. in Wolf). For such a reputable site to feature street style<\/em>\u2014documented during Fashion Month\u2014represents fashion\u2019s appropriation of online street style photography. The move did not just conflate street style with the outfits worn at Fashion Month but naturalized<\/em> its direct, delimited association with intermediaries\u2019 ensembles. In the site\u2019s context, the street style photograph becomes solely<\/em> a representation of Fashion Month and reads in relation to collection photographs and advertisements.[7]<\/a> Style.com<\/em> does not invite reader comments but instead compiles a clickable album, a more commercial mode of presentation (see de Perthuis). Ton\u2019s images thus communicates aesthetics from within Fashion Month as a scene to an online spectatorship. Karen de Perthuis notes that documentation of \u201chow fashion works in [a specific] street style blog offers a model that can be translated or applied \u2026 to other types of blogs across the field\u201d (4). Analysis of Ton\u2019s Fashion Month street style photographs illuminates the medium\u2019s enfoldment into established discourses.<\/p>\nFashion on the \u201cStreet\u201d<\/strong><\/h5>\nThe presence of Fashion Weeks inform cities\u2019 cultural positions, while their representations are situated within historical referents (Craik; Gilbert). Fashion capitals have become international due to increased corporatization of fashion houses and sponsorship of Fashion Week events\u2014a phenomenon that Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Godart terms imperialization<\/em> (14, 129-42). Fashion Weeks impress a set of classist signifiers onto urban environments, through the arrival of editors, retailers, celebrities, and photographers and their enactments\u2014what de Certeau terms spatial practices<\/em> (96). Presentations occur in tourist-centered cosmopolitan areas rather than in residential (or disenfranchised) communities. Alan Blum examines scenes as products of cities\u2019 \u201curban theatricality\u201d and notes that \u201cfashion scenes\u201d are positioned as exclusive (365-67). Rocamora and Alistair O\u2019Neill contrast \u201cthe public space of ordinary people\u201d with \u201cthe exclusive space of the fashion show and its extraordinary audience of celebrities and other fashion insiders\u201d (189). Fashion Month has assumed such spatial proportions, distinct ensembles, and theatrical interactions that columnists and scholars compare it to a circus or a red carpet affair (Menkes; Shea; Titton, \u201cStyling the Street\u201d). On-site observation that I conducted of New York Fashion Week in February 2016 confirmed a sartorial distinction between elite attendees and outsiders, the \u201creal\u201d inhabitants whose quotidian, work-related mobilities underwrite the streets (de Certeau 93). People familiar with Fashion Month photograph conventions can determine which individuals will attract photographers based on their outfits and attractiveness (see Luvaas 266). Nonetheless, comments from locals and tourists indicated that even outsiders could conclude that attendees\u2019 dress transcended the mainstream. Craik stresses that event producers fabricate a \u201ccosmopolitan atmosphere\u201d via \u201cinternational\u201d associations (366): this construction follows tourism advertisements that turn cities into simulacral destinations (362). Notions of the international street as simultaneously accessible and elitist exist alongside alternative imaginings of the global street<\/em> as a site of political resistance (Sassen). Fashion Month\u2019s depictions of the urban street complement and clash with its often European associations to editorial effect: manipulating subversive formulations just as, pace<\/em> de Certeau, the fashion scene performatively appropriates cities\u2019 physical spaces (98).<\/p>\nStreet Style in Discourse<\/strong><\/h5>\nScholars trace the term street style<\/em> to its references to popular trends and subcultural movements, situating its traditional associations in urban communities. Sophie Woodward defines street style as fashion worn and \u201cobserved on the street<\/em>\u201d and outlines how the term is constituted via a circuit of discourses: \u201cas part of popular parlance, within media representations of fashion in the street style sections of magazines, in outfits that are assembled, in exhibitions and academics\u2019 accounts\u201d (84, my emphasis). Monica Titton delineates between notions of style<\/em>, as individual experimentation, and fashion<\/em> as subject to commercial imperatives (\u201cFashion in the City\u201d 136).\u00a0 David Gilbert observes that communities influence cities\u2019 cultural fabrics in a manner that fashion narratives overlook: \u201cthe creativity arising from the intermixing and chaos \u2026 the performance of fashion on the streets\u201d (29). Research in subcultures illuminates problematics between examination of street style as representative of demarcated communities and acknowledgment of its diverse influences (Woodward 85). Caroline Evans observes that attempts to categorize subcultures overlook the nuances of cultural statements as derived from multiple sites, references, and practices.[8]<\/a> Subcultures have offered well-documented inspiration to fashion: hip-hop and punk aesthetics have recurred in the collections of Chanel and Jean Paul Gaultier and in mainstream retail lines (Barnard 45-46). Ted Polhemus formulates a \u201cbubble-up\u201d model of influence that contradicts classical social theories. Dick Hebdige asserts that the dominant culture incorporates<\/em> statements\u2019 subversive intent for commercial and political interests (94). For publications to name Fashion Month photographs street style<\/em> represents not just an incorporation of the medium but also fashion\u2019s textual incorporation of the term. In limiting street style as a referent to Fashion Month ensembles, the press erases dress as a situated practice and describes items from high fashion, positioned at a socioeconomic remove from urban communities. Journalists complain that for media discourses to use the term to refer to intermediaries\u2019 outfits diminishes the individual locatable expression that true street style should constitute, and lament a lost space \u201cfree from\u201d fashion\u2019s \u201ctransactional compromises\u201d (Berlinger; see also LaFerla, Shea). Indeed, editors\u2019 outfits are often donated or loaned from fashion houses and public relations companies, and high-profile attendees have become notorious for changing outfits between presentations.<\/p>\nStreet Style in Photographs<\/strong><\/h5>\nThe historical presence of cities and streets, as place and idea, illuminates how fashion photography operates on a spectrum between the authentic and the produced, invoking a contentious politics of urban representation. Fashion needs \u201cthe street\u201d to position itself as upper-class, while the \u201cstreet\u201d needs fashion to read as authentic (Rocamora and O\u2019Neill 189). In an echo of Woodward, Luvaas defines street style photography \u201cas simply fashion photography taken \u2018on the street<\/em>,\u2019\u201d in contrast with studio shoots and fashion shows (23, my emphasis). Predecessors include street photography; anthropological portraits; fashion photographs of models in outdoor locations or studio-replicated streets; street style photographs in which subjects are not aware of the camera; and portraits of non-professional subjects (see Luvaas).[9]<\/a> Titton comments that cities have occupied a \u201ccentral\u201d position \u201cas both scene and real space for the photographic staging of fashion\u201d (\u201cFashion in the City\u201d 128). Luvaas and Titton (\u201cStyling the Street\u201d) trace street style photographs to the modern period and its fascination with man-made environments, notably Haussmann\u2019s Paris. Luvaas articulates the predominance of \u201cthe street\u201d as \u201ca subject<\/em> of street style photography, perhaps even the<\/em> subject, a fluid, amorphous entity that accumulates meanings as it snowballs into fashion world ubiquity\u201d (25, original emphasis). Fashion photographers such as Irving Penn and Edward Steichen romanticized the street as a construct of urban impoverishment: a location \u201cwhere upmarket fashionistas could go slumming in search of \u2018real life\u2019\u201d (Luvaas 43; see also Rocamora & O\u2019Neill 187). Fashion\u2019s embrace of subcultures and countercultures celebrated the street as a site of raw expression (Luvaas 44; Rocamora & O\u2019Neill 188-89). The work of print media street fashion photographers such as Bill Cunningham and Amy Arbus in New York demonstrates a confluence of these aesthetics (Luvaas 45-47; Titton, \u201cStyling the Street\u201d 128-29).[10]<\/a> iD<\/em> Magazine<\/em>\u2019s iconic 1980s \u201cstraight-up\u201d portrait showcased the UK\u2019s \u201creal\u201d fashion choices via its comparative lack<\/em> of production. Subjects were captured against a white wall on an actual street, represented as a \u201csite for the creative performance of \u2018real\u2019 people\u201d (Rocamora & O\u2019Neill 185; see also Luvaas 49). Creator Steve Johnston shot most of the portraits in front of the same wall\u2014the location was both specific and representational (Luvaas 51). Rocamora and O\u2019Neill contend that print media\u2019s co-optation of street fashion erased the street in lieu of a metaphorical (and perhaps racist) white space or brick wall: i-D<\/em>\u2019s 2003 studio-produced homage to street fashion renders the street \u201ca blank canvas\u201d or a reductionist \u201curban wasteland\u201d (195). The Los Angeles magazine NYLON <\/em>and the Japanese magazines FRUiTS<\/em> and TUNE<\/em> return to a more untouched street fashion portraiture (Luvaas 55-56).<\/p>\nWhile online street style photography returns to literal streets, it commits a similar act of erasure\u2014the wall reappears, but its connotations are editorialized. Luvaas posits that the street has been turned into a \u201cconceptual screen\u201d (25), blurring social and locational contexts. Susan Ingram observes that The Sartorialist<\/em> renders cities visually indiscernible:<\/p>\n[T]he city forms an anonymous backdrop against which fashionistas can look urban. The [subjects] \u2026 are in an interesting way placeless. In many of the images, the city disappears completely, and it is rarely clear from the photos themselves where they have been taken, which is why each has to be labeled. Viewed without their labels, it becomes apparent how lacking in specificity these places are, and how similar the looks. (188)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Elizabeth Wilson notes that marketers use the term \u201curban\u201d to invoke the lifeblood of streets or allude to wastelands (35): these inverted associations become connected to cosmopolitanism. Sarah Banet-Weiser asserts that \u201cstreet\u201d and \u201curban\u201d are racialized in American cultural discourses, connoting dangerous ghettos or nostalgic historical sites (105). For Luvaas, the street remains contested: \u201cthe last vestige of authenticity in a commodified culture and \u2026 a stage on which that very commodified culture performs some of its most ostentatious displays\u201d (68). Ton\u2019s photographs collapse the distinction between the authentic and the constructed, imposing the fashion scene upon the \u201cstreet\u201d and repositioning the street itself as status marker.<\/p>\n
Ton\u2019s photographs must be read beside his contemporaries\u2019 ambivalent realizations of the \u201cstreet.\u201d Luvaas likens Ton\u2019s aesthetic to that of H. B. Nam (streetfsn.com<\/em>), Youngjun Koo (koo.im<\/em>), Michael Dumler (onabbottkinney.com<\/em>), Nabile Quenum (jaiperdumavest.com<\/em>), Driely S. (Driely S.<\/em>), and Adam Katz Sinding (Le 21\u00e8me<\/em>) (63-64). These photographers\u2019 movement-based shots include \u201cthe details of the garment\u201d as but one component and instead reconstitute the modernist, European street \u201cof the poetic moment \u2026 of romantic possibility, of happy accident \u2026 [the rest] dissolves into a field of lens blur\u201d (Luvaas 65). Ton remains, however, a pioneer in the use of the horizontal frame and cropped focus (see Phelps). While lens blur and streetscapes are prominent compositional elements, Ton\u2019s conceptualization of the street is much more complex: here, it becomes aestheticized and often effaced. Moreover, his focus on fashion is far from (and cannot be) incidental. Ton\u2019s is the international street of fashion tourism<\/em>, of tourist mobilities predicated on consumerism, and the arrival of the international fashion set (Craik 354). Ton\u2019s composition is more readable than that of his peers, prioritizing opulent commodities and their aspirational wearers over mood. However, the photographs are not democratic: rather, the aesthetic treads a line between the experimental and the commercial.<\/p>\nAnalysis: Tommy Ton\u2019s Cities as Streetscapes<\/strong><\/h5>\nTon\u2019s photographs share numerous elements: foremost are the attendees walking or running to or from venues, while in the background are rows of town cars, taxis, and motorbikes and\/or textured architecture. Ton also offers cropped torso shots or close-ups of handbags, shoes, and other accessories (Fig. 2). Ton positions the street as an editorial backdrop against which to emphasize fashion; cities are often recognizable only to those who are already familiar with them. Weather helps to indicate location: shifts inform light and shadow, while select photographs represent extreme conditions. New York endured wet snowfall during Fall\/Winter 2014 Fashion Week, and several photographs depict insiders protecting themselves from the elements. Taxis and buses, in addition to license plates, often become the only markers of place. Sixteen photographs taken at New York Fashion Week (eight from each album) show editors in front of iconic yellow taxis; similarly, red double-decker buses feature in several London photographs. Nonetheless, the vehicles\u2019 presence becomes naturalized as a scene of international mobilities and an advertisement for these cities as tourist destinations: not cities as lived but cities as discursively produced. The vehicles become a flattened and often blurred element. More than half of the photographs (56.1%) make visible the literal street and its referents (54.7% for Spring\/Summer 2014 and 57.3% for Fall\/Winter 2014). 349 photographs (48.1%) illustrate cars; 104 (29.8%) of these feature cars in a prominent position. 211 photographs (29.1%) contain traffic, parking, or directional signage, or barriers and traffic cones. 219 photographs (30.2%) depict subjects on or in the street, while 69 (31.5%) of these show an indicated crosswalk (Fig. 3). 174 photographs (24.0%) capture individuals close in front of an architectural structure, while half (50.1%) illustrate architectural structures in the distance. 33 photographs (5.0%) were coded as \u201cperspective shots\u201d that Ton took from the middle of a street, creating a striking aesthetic that recalls a modern-era fascination with urban architecture (Fig. 4).<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Fig2_090613_Tommy_Ton_S2014RTW_slide_162.WEB_.jpg\")
Figure 2<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Fig3_ss14pfw132.WEB_.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Figure 3<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Fig4_Milan_FW_SS2014.WEB_.jpg\")
Figure 4<\/p>\n
Ton\u2019s photographs frequently convey a sense of placelessness, similar to those of The Sartorialist<\/em>. Esther Rosser observes that photographs\u2019 location in the dominant fashion capitals lends clout to the insiders who appear (161; see also Titton, \u201cStyling the Street\u201d 132). However, status is communicated through the fact<\/em> of the subjects\u2019 location and not the cities\u2019 specific architectural features. I coded 343 photographs (47.2%) as \u201cstreetscape,\u201d in which elements of the urban setting comprised significant additional space in the frame or were otherwise instrumental to the composition (Fig. 5). This percentage is consistent across seasons (51.3% for Spring\/Summer 2014 and 43.8% for Fall\/Winter 2014). Historical architecture with friezes and columns reads as European but not location-specific: it increases the cachet of the locations as museum cities. It suffices that the architecture appears to be antiquated and European. 76 photographs (10.5%) capture subjects in front of walls or doors, whose colours and textures reflect or contrast with their outfits (11.5% for Spring\/Summer 2014 and 10.0% for Fall\/Winter 2014). 20 of these photographs (26.3%) feature a brick wall. One particular beige brick wall in New York (Fall\/Winter 2014) matches an insider\u2019s parka (Fig. 6). In a subsequent photograph, it offers a plain canvas to foreground Russian fashion editor Miroslava Duma\u2019s flower-printed coat (Fig. 7). 404 photographs (55.7%) use lens blur to render streets indiscernible or erase them (53.1% for Spring\/Summer 2014 and 58.0% for Fall\/Winter 2014). 129 photographs (17.8%) contain sculptures, walls, architectural structures, landmarks, or (torn) street posters or advertisements that bear similar or opposite colour palettes and\/or textures to subjects\u2019 outfits.<\/p>\nIn 18 photographs (9 from each album), from New York and Milan, Ton juxtaposes ensembles with graffiti. Banet-Weiser examines street art\u2019s \u201cambivalent\u201d role, both contentious and productive, in cities\u2019 cultural positioning: \u201cstreet art\u2019s association with graffiti and tagging \u2026 are not only deeply racialized in the US imagination but also fetishized for their links to racial otherness\u201d (101). Graffiti emerged out of the 1970s and 1980s US hip-hop scene in response to the encroachment of commercial culture onto public spaces and the disenfranchisement of Black and Latino neighbourhoods under New York\u2019s \u201curban \u2018renewal\u2019\u201d policies (Banet-Weiser 102). As \u201cfigures\u201d that rhetoricize urban spaces, such \u201ccalligraphies howl without raising their voices\u201d and resist photographic pinning down (de Certeau 102). Cities\u2019 use of street art to self-brand as creative<\/em>\u2014making it palatable for a white audience (Banet-Weiser 105)\u2014parallels photographers\u2019 use of graffiti to mark streets and persons as fashionable. In a Fall\/Winter 2014 Milan photograph, Ton frames Dello Russo in profile in a fringed black jacket and pencil skirt in front of black, curled scrawl (Fig. 8). In another, a woman stands in a white trench coat (printed with red lips) and embellished red heels in front of a yellow wall with red graffiti (Fig. 9). The tagged walls invoke \u201curban\u201d hip-hop aesthetics to create a class contrast that prioritizes the expensive fashions.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Fig5_NYFW_2014.WEB_.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Figure 5<\/p>\n\n\t\t
<\/p>\n
Fig. 1<\/p>\n
In a phenomenon known as the street style parade<\/em>, in-house and freelance photographers\u00a0 compete to document attendees\u2019 and models\u2019 ensembles as they enter and leave Fashion Month venues. Street style blogs, the medium from which this spectacle arose, claim to capture the fashions of \u201creal\u201d people on the streets of international cities. Following the medium\u2019s rise to popularity in the mid-2000s, fashion publications offered photographers lucrative contracts to contribute street style images from Fashion Month to enhance collection reportage. This article examines Tommy Ton\u2019s photographs for Style.com<\/em> to interrogate the media representations of fashion show attendees and the class politics communicated in the metropolitan streets on which Fashion Month materializes. I contend that these photographs, and their inclusion in press content, appropriate the contested term street style<\/em> as a site on which to inscribe fashion\u2019s elitist social, material, and embodied ideals. I further scrutinize depictions of Fashion Month cities to situate the clothes within fashion\u2019s internationalization under neoliberalism. Fashion\u2019s consecration of the Fashion Month insider photograph as palimpsest has disconnected the medium of street style photography from its (tenuous) ideals of candidness. The photographs\u2019 circulation via professional websites and media outlets has rendered the sartorial choices of fashion\u2019s arbiters arguably more influential than collection photographs and has blurred distinctions between the fashions worn in the indoor and outdoor environments. Jennifer Craik describes a form of \u201cglobal high fashion worn by fashion journalists, stylists, and celebrities who travel worldwide to attend fashion weeks and special fashion events\u201d (354). It is this subset that cultural parlance terms street style<\/em>. Ton\u2019s aesthetic utilizes streetscapes to promote this internationalized mode of dress that communicates wearers\u2019 status not just in fashion circles but as members of a larger cultured class. Cities function as status enhancers within a discursive system that privileges beautiful clothes and bodies. Elements that do reveal location, such as historical landmarks, function within existent cultural discourses to promote cities as idealized fashion capitals<\/em> (or fashion cities<\/em>) and tourist destinations (see Gilbert).[2]<\/a><\/p>\n This article is part of broader research situated in fashion, media, and cultural studies: this research examines the mediation of the fashion show as a microcosm of online media\u2019s effects on consumer culture and assesses the social discursive production of fashion shows and their attendees via diverse textual and visual platforms. It is crucial to contextualize Ton\u2019s photographs as embedded within the academic and social histories of the discursive terms and practices that they appropriate. Furthermore, one must account for the production of cultural and aesthetic ideals specific to the cities in which these representations are located, including intersections with other aspirational branding and consumer practices, such as those of tourism.<\/p>\n I first outline the methods used to analyze Ton\u2019s photographs and defines a theoretical conceptualization of Fashion Month as scene. I then document Ton\u2019s rise to prominence within fashion\u2019s industrial structures. Further, I describe how the mobilities of Fashion Month within dominant cities enact fashion\u2019s condition of internationalization. Next, I offer a scholastic genealogy of street style<\/em> to illustrate the class and racial tensions in which Ton\u2019s discursive representations circulate. Further, I summarize research in street style photography as both photographic genre and material practice, contextualized within historical representations of modern cities and fashionable subjects. Ton\u2019s photographs demonstrate\u2014and are situated within\u2014a persistent dialectic between \u201creal\u201d or \u201cauthentic\u201d depictions and fashion\u2019s editorial or commercial dictates: this dialectic reflects international cities\u2019 contestations in the cultural positioning of urban environments and class-based and\/or racialized constructs of the \u201cstreet.\u201d<\/p>\n I performed manual content analysis on a non-random sample of all of the photographs that Ton posted to Style.com<\/em> during the Spring\/Summer 2014 (n=339) and Fall\/Winter 2014 (n=386) ready-to-wear women\u2019s collections, for a total of 725 photographs (n=725). The breakdown of cities is as follows: Fall\/Winter 2014\u2014Paris (44.3%), New York City (27.7%), Milan (17.9%), London (10.4%); Spring\/Summer 2014\u2014Paris (47.8%), New York City (24.2%), Milan (16.5%), London (12.1%). To obtain an accurate count of cities depicted, I cross-referenced the photographs with the archives on Ton\u2019s personal website, which names the locations.[3]<\/a> Paris photographs comprise almost half of the sample, suggesting that Ton either attended more fashion shows or preferred to take more photographs there; this statistic also attests to Paris\u2019s dominance as a fashion capital (Rocamora).<\/p>\n Gillian Rose\u2019s Foucauldian approach to visual discourse analysis intersects Ton\u2019s photographs with related media discourses and aesthetic and embodied trends predicated on an elevated class echelon. Rose\u2019s notion of social modality<\/em> considers the \u201ceconomic processes\u201d and \u201csocial practices\u201d that inform the production of visual materials (24-31). Central to reception is the element of compositionality<\/em>, the presentation and relation of items (22). Agn\u00e8s Rocamora\u2019s formulation of fashion discourse<\/em>, or fashion media discourse<\/em>, combines Bourdieu\u2019s symbolic value production and Foucault\u2019s relation of discourses to institutional structures in order to read representations of Paris and other fashion capitals and of the persons that inhabit these cities. This article applies a Bourdieusian lens to the material and social structures of Fashion Month and to the consumer distinctions communicated in fashion show attendees\u2019 sartorial choices. Joanne Entwistle and Agn\u00e8s Rocamora, pace<\/em> Bourdieu, describe Fashion Week as a literal manifestation of the field of fashion<\/em> in which cultural intermediaries<\/em> compete for cultural, social, and economic capital (736). This formulation parallels Will Straw\u2019s characterization of scenes<\/em>:<\/p>\n \u00a0[A]s collectivities <\/em>marked by some form of proximity; as spaces of assembly<\/em> engaged in pulling together the varieties of cultural phenomena; as workplaces<\/em> engaged . . . in the transformation of materials; as ethical worlds<\/em> shaped by the working out or maintenance of behavioural protocols; as spaces of traversal<\/em> and preservation<\/em> through which cultural energies and practices pass at particular speeds, and as spaces of mediation<\/em> . . . (477)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Fashion Weeks coalesce the industry\u2019s social relations and material practices: audience risers create a Foucauldian \u201cregime of looking\u201d\u2014a reverse Panopticon\u2014in which members that possess the most influence are seated in the front row, visible to others (Entwistle and Rocamora 744). Insiders\u2019 display of personal fashion capital<\/em> constitutes a performance of habitus<\/em>, sets of tastes<\/em> and dispositions<\/em> that Bourdieu identified as the product of class position (Entwistle and Rocamora 740). What can productively be called the fashion scene<\/em>, or the Fashion Month scene<\/em>, is rendered visible on an international scale and in an immediate timeframe via online photograph circulation. Bourdieu\u2019s hierarchical theorization of consumer culture has its critics: Gilles Lipovetsky declared that the introduction of multiple markets facilitates individual choice, while Mike Featherstone posited that consumption in postmodern culture should be evaluated based on tastes. Subculture research, outlined below, further indicates alternative directions of fashion adoption. However the press\u2019s increased focus on fashion show attendees indicates fashion\u2019s reassertion of class-based hierarchies in the Internet era. Cultural intermediaries must appear<\/em> to other field members, through their dress and embodiment, to possess appropriate economic capital, design knowledge, and professional connections (Entwistle and Rocamora 746). Consumers who access Fashion Month photographs perceive attendees as representative of an elite class, and their ability to travel to international fashion capitals as evidence of financial flexibility and industrial clout.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Online street style photography became a recognized practice through the work of photographers such as Ton, Garance Dor\u00e9 (Garance <\/em>Dor<\/em>\u00e9<\/em>), Phil Oh (Street Peeper<\/em>), Yvan Rodic (Facehunter<\/em>), and Scott Schuman (The Sartorialist<\/em>, who photographed for Style.com<\/em> from 2006 to 2009). These photographers documented international street fashion, purporting to capture cities\u2019 sartorial experimentation. Photographer and ethnographer Brent Luvaas contends that street style blogs\u2019 \u201ccultural value\u201d resides in their illustration of \u201cspecific cities at specific moments in time \u2026 well beyond the traditional boundaries of the global fashion industry\u201d (4). Print and online street fashion photographers have earned their reputations touring cities with a casual, all-seeing approach that scholars liken to the flaneur<\/em> of the Parisian arcades. Fashion and visual culture scholars have written on Schuman and Rodic\u2019s portraiture as demonstrative of the form. Popular claims of street style blogs\u2019 democratic nature are predicated on online media\u2019s geographical reach and interactive capacities (including comment forums); depictions of clothes from different price echelons; and the fact that bloggers earned professional notice through amateur practices. However, scholars problematize such utopian ideals, noting the promotion of a homogenous aesthetic that adheres to fashion\u2019s limited embodied standards. Further, fashion\u2019s stakeholders exerted an influence in the medium from its earliest incarnations via brand collaborations, advertisements, and invitations to practitioners to attend fashion shows.[4]<\/a><\/p>\n Ton\u2019s position as one of the earliest online street style photographers facilitated his rapid rise to influence in the field of fashion and the formation of an international forum for his work. Ton created his blog Jak & Jil<\/em> in 2005 while working as a buyer at the luxury department store Holt Renfrew in Toronto (Amed). Canadian retailer Lynda Latner, impressed with Ton\u2019s online work, paid for Ton to travel to Paris Fashion Week: there, Ton honed a \u201ccandid\u201d and frenetic photographic style that differed from his peers\u2019 portraiture (though he does shoot portraits) (qtd. in Amed). Still in his 20s, Ton was not as established in fashion as predecessors such as Schuman, who had worked in menswear (de Perthuis 4; Rosser 158). Nonetheless, his position at Holt Renfrew reinforces the fact that several street style visionaries already worked in fashion prior to starting their recreational online pursuits. In 2009, Ton was one of four bloggers invited to sit front-row at Dolce & Gabbana\u2019s Spring\/Summer 2010 presentation, a moment that scholars pinpoint as fashion\u2019s consecration of the medium. That same year, Cond\u00e9 Nast hired Ton as its \u201cresident\u201d photographer of Fashion Month street style (replacing Schuman). During Ton\u2019s tenure, the street style parade<\/em> became a documented phenomenon. Nicole Phelps lists Ton\u2019s recruitment as a catalytic event before street style exploded in the form of bloggers\u2019 increased Fashion Month presence and the pervasive influence of brands and media sites on the practice. The seasons covered in the sample represent street style photographers\u2019 dominance in the streets of Fashion Month, later to be outnumbered by press and commercial photographers (Luvaas 284).<\/p>\n Ton\u2019s photographs for Style.com<\/em> demand analysis, as those few scholars that have addressed his work situate him within street style photography but do not examine his oeuvre in detail. In 2011, The Business of Fashion<\/em> deemed Ton \u201cthe world\u2019s most influential street style fashion photographer<\/em> today\u201d (Amed, my emphasis). Luvaas cites Ton as a creator of street style stars<\/em> (270). Other photographers observe whom he shoots, and his chosen intermediaries gain public recognition\u2014Dello Russo, who appears 22 times in this sample (at least with her face discernible), is the foremost example (Titton, \u201cStyling the Street\u201d 132-33).[5]<\/a> Furthermore, Ton\u2019s aesthetic has become representative of street style photographs and is often used as a visual referent for the term itself. Style.com<\/em> is not the sole outlet to publish Fashion Month photographs under a street style <\/em>banner: however, it is (or was) an essential resource that contains news stories, product recommendations, and a comprehensive database of collection reviews and photographs.[6]<\/a> Announcing his departure, Ton praised the site as \u201cthe most influential and relevant fashion publication\u201d (qtd. in Wolf). For such a reputable site to feature street style<\/em>\u2014documented during Fashion Month\u2014represents fashion\u2019s appropriation of online street style photography. The move did not just conflate street style with the outfits worn at Fashion Month but naturalized<\/em> its direct, delimited association with intermediaries\u2019 ensembles. In the site\u2019s context, the street style photograph becomes solely<\/em> a representation of Fashion Month and reads in relation to collection photographs and advertisements.[7]<\/a> Style.com<\/em> does not invite reader comments but instead compiles a clickable album, a more commercial mode of presentation (see de Perthuis). Ton\u2019s images thus communicates aesthetics from within Fashion Month as a scene to an online spectatorship. Karen de Perthuis notes that documentation of \u201chow fashion works in [a specific] street style blog offers a model that can be translated or applied \u2026 to other types of blogs across the field\u201d (4). Analysis of Ton\u2019s Fashion Month street style photographs illuminates the medium\u2019s enfoldment into established discourses.<\/p>\n The presence of Fashion Weeks inform cities\u2019 cultural positions, while their representations are situated within historical referents (Craik; Gilbert). Fashion capitals have become international due to increased corporatization of fashion houses and sponsorship of Fashion Week events\u2014a phenomenon that Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Godart terms imperialization<\/em> (14, 129-42). Fashion Weeks impress a set of classist signifiers onto urban environments, through the arrival of editors, retailers, celebrities, and photographers and their enactments\u2014what de Certeau terms spatial practices<\/em> (96). Presentations occur in tourist-centered cosmopolitan areas rather than in residential (or disenfranchised) communities. Alan Blum examines scenes as products of cities\u2019 \u201curban theatricality\u201d and notes that \u201cfashion scenes\u201d are positioned as exclusive (365-67). Rocamora and Alistair O\u2019Neill contrast \u201cthe public space of ordinary people\u201d with \u201cthe exclusive space of the fashion show and its extraordinary audience of celebrities and other fashion insiders\u201d (189). Fashion Month has assumed such spatial proportions, distinct ensembles, and theatrical interactions that columnists and scholars compare it to a circus or a red carpet affair (Menkes; Shea; Titton, \u201cStyling the Street\u201d). On-site observation that I conducted of New York Fashion Week in February 2016 confirmed a sartorial distinction between elite attendees and outsiders, the \u201creal\u201d inhabitants whose quotidian, work-related mobilities underwrite the streets (de Certeau 93). People familiar with Fashion Month photograph conventions can determine which individuals will attract photographers based on their outfits and attractiveness (see Luvaas 266). Nonetheless, comments from locals and tourists indicated that even outsiders could conclude that attendees\u2019 dress transcended the mainstream. Craik stresses that event producers fabricate a \u201ccosmopolitan atmosphere\u201d via \u201cinternational\u201d associations (366): this construction follows tourism advertisements that turn cities into simulacral destinations (362). Notions of the international street as simultaneously accessible and elitist exist alongside alternative imaginings of the global street<\/em> as a site of political resistance (Sassen). Fashion Month\u2019s depictions of the urban street complement and clash with its often European associations to editorial effect: manipulating subversive formulations just as, pace<\/em> de Certeau, the fashion scene performatively appropriates cities\u2019 physical spaces (98).<\/p>\n Scholars trace the term street style<\/em> to its references to popular trends and subcultural movements, situating its traditional associations in urban communities. Sophie Woodward defines street style as fashion worn and \u201cobserved on the street<\/em>\u201d and outlines how the term is constituted via a circuit of discourses: \u201cas part of popular parlance, within media representations of fashion in the street style sections of magazines, in outfits that are assembled, in exhibitions and academics\u2019 accounts\u201d (84, my emphasis). Monica Titton delineates between notions of style<\/em>, as individual experimentation, and fashion<\/em> as subject to commercial imperatives (\u201cFashion in the City\u201d 136).\u00a0 David Gilbert observes that communities influence cities\u2019 cultural fabrics in a manner that fashion narratives overlook: \u201cthe creativity arising from the intermixing and chaos \u2026 the performance of fashion on the streets\u201d (29). Research in subcultures illuminates problematics between examination of street style as representative of demarcated communities and acknowledgment of its diverse influences (Woodward 85). Caroline Evans observes that attempts to categorize subcultures overlook the nuances of cultural statements as derived from multiple sites, references, and practices.[8]<\/a> Subcultures have offered well-documented inspiration to fashion: hip-hop and punk aesthetics have recurred in the collections of Chanel and Jean Paul Gaultier and in mainstream retail lines (Barnard 45-46). Ted Polhemus formulates a \u201cbubble-up\u201d model of influence that contradicts classical social theories. Dick Hebdige asserts that the dominant culture incorporates<\/em> statements\u2019 subversive intent for commercial and political interests (94). For publications to name Fashion Month photographs street style<\/em> represents not just an incorporation of the medium but also fashion\u2019s textual incorporation of the term. In limiting street style as a referent to Fashion Month ensembles, the press erases dress as a situated practice and describes items from high fashion, positioned at a socioeconomic remove from urban communities. Journalists complain that for media discourses to use the term to refer to intermediaries\u2019 outfits diminishes the individual locatable expression that true street style should constitute, and lament a lost space \u201cfree from\u201d fashion\u2019s \u201ctransactional compromises\u201d (Berlinger; see also LaFerla, Shea). Indeed, editors\u2019 outfits are often donated or loaned from fashion houses and public relations companies, and high-profile attendees have become notorious for changing outfits between presentations.<\/p>\n The historical presence of cities and streets, as place and idea, illuminates how fashion photography operates on a spectrum between the authentic and the produced, invoking a contentious politics of urban representation. Fashion needs \u201cthe street\u201d to position itself as upper-class, while the \u201cstreet\u201d needs fashion to read as authentic (Rocamora and O\u2019Neill 189). In an echo of Woodward, Luvaas defines street style photography \u201cas simply fashion photography taken \u2018on the street<\/em>,\u2019\u201d in contrast with studio shoots and fashion shows (23, my emphasis). Predecessors include street photography; anthropological portraits; fashion photographs of models in outdoor locations or studio-replicated streets; street style photographs in which subjects are not aware of the camera; and portraits of non-professional subjects (see Luvaas).[9]<\/a> Titton comments that cities have occupied a \u201ccentral\u201d position \u201cas both scene and real space for the photographic staging of fashion\u201d (\u201cFashion in the City\u201d 128). Luvaas and Titton (\u201cStyling the Street\u201d) trace street style photographs to the modern period and its fascination with man-made environments, notably Haussmann\u2019s Paris. Luvaas articulates the predominance of \u201cthe street\u201d as \u201ca subject<\/em> of street style photography, perhaps even the<\/em> subject, a fluid, amorphous entity that accumulates meanings as it snowballs into fashion world ubiquity\u201d (25, original emphasis). Fashion photographers such as Irving Penn and Edward Steichen romanticized the street as a construct of urban impoverishment: a location \u201cwhere upmarket fashionistas could go slumming in search of \u2018real life\u2019\u201d (Luvaas 43; see also Rocamora & O\u2019Neill 187). Fashion\u2019s embrace of subcultures and countercultures celebrated the street as a site of raw expression (Luvaas 44; Rocamora & O\u2019Neill 188-89). The work of print media street fashion photographers such as Bill Cunningham and Amy Arbus in New York demonstrates a confluence of these aesthetics (Luvaas 45-47; Titton, \u201cStyling the Street\u201d 128-29).[10]<\/a> iD<\/em> Magazine<\/em>\u2019s iconic 1980s \u201cstraight-up\u201d portrait showcased the UK\u2019s \u201creal\u201d fashion choices via its comparative lack<\/em> of production. Subjects were captured against a white wall on an actual street, represented as a \u201csite for the creative performance of \u2018real\u2019 people\u201d (Rocamora & O\u2019Neill 185; see also Luvaas 49). Creator Steve Johnston shot most of the portraits in front of the same wall\u2014the location was both specific and representational (Luvaas 51). Rocamora and O\u2019Neill contend that print media\u2019s co-optation of street fashion erased the street in lieu of a metaphorical (and perhaps racist) white space or brick wall: i-D<\/em>\u2019s 2003 studio-produced homage to street fashion renders the street \u201ca blank canvas\u201d or a reductionist \u201curban wasteland\u201d (195). The Los Angeles magazine NYLON <\/em>and the Japanese magazines FRUiTS<\/em> and TUNE<\/em> return to a more untouched street fashion portraiture (Luvaas 55-56).<\/p>\n While online street style photography returns to literal streets, it commits a similar act of erasure\u2014the wall reappears, but its connotations are editorialized. Luvaas posits that the street has been turned into a \u201cconceptual screen\u201d (25), blurring social and locational contexts. Susan Ingram observes that The Sartorialist<\/em> renders cities visually indiscernible:<\/p>\n [T]he city forms an anonymous backdrop against which fashionistas can look urban. The [subjects] \u2026 are in an interesting way placeless. In many of the images, the city disappears completely, and it is rarely clear from the photos themselves where they have been taken, which is why each has to be labeled. Viewed without their labels, it becomes apparent how lacking in specificity these places are, and how similar the looks. (188)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Elizabeth Wilson notes that marketers use the term \u201curban\u201d to invoke the lifeblood of streets or allude to wastelands (35): these inverted associations become connected to cosmopolitanism. Sarah Banet-Weiser asserts that \u201cstreet\u201d and \u201curban\u201d are racialized in American cultural discourses, connoting dangerous ghettos or nostalgic historical sites (105). For Luvaas, the street remains contested: \u201cthe last vestige of authenticity in a commodified culture and \u2026 a stage on which that very commodified culture performs some of its most ostentatious displays\u201d (68). Ton\u2019s photographs collapse the distinction between the authentic and the constructed, imposing the fashion scene upon the \u201cstreet\u201d and repositioning the street itself as status marker.<\/p>\n Ton\u2019s photographs must be read beside his contemporaries\u2019 ambivalent realizations of the \u201cstreet.\u201d Luvaas likens Ton\u2019s aesthetic to that of H. B. Nam (streetfsn.com<\/em>), Youngjun Koo (koo.im<\/em>), Michael Dumler (onabbottkinney.com<\/em>), Nabile Quenum (jaiperdumavest.com<\/em>), Driely S. (Driely S.<\/em>), and Adam Katz Sinding (Le 21\u00e8me<\/em>) (63-64). These photographers\u2019 movement-based shots include \u201cthe details of the garment\u201d as but one component and instead reconstitute the modernist, European street \u201cof the poetic moment \u2026 of romantic possibility, of happy accident \u2026 [the rest] dissolves into a field of lens blur\u201d (Luvaas 65). Ton remains, however, a pioneer in the use of the horizontal frame and cropped focus (see Phelps). While lens blur and streetscapes are prominent compositional elements, Ton\u2019s conceptualization of the street is much more complex: here, it becomes aestheticized and often effaced. Moreover, his focus on fashion is far from (and cannot be) incidental. Ton\u2019s is the international street of fashion tourism<\/em>, of tourist mobilities predicated on consumerism, and the arrival of the international fashion set (Craik 354). Ton\u2019s composition is more readable than that of his peers, prioritizing opulent commodities and their aspirational wearers over mood. However, the photographs are not democratic: rather, the aesthetic treads a line between the experimental and the commercial.<\/p>\n Ton\u2019s photographs share numerous elements: foremost are the attendees walking or running to or from venues, while in the background are rows of town cars, taxis, and motorbikes and\/or textured architecture. Ton also offers cropped torso shots or close-ups of handbags, shoes, and other accessories (Fig. 2). Ton positions the street as an editorial backdrop against which to emphasize fashion; cities are often recognizable only to those who are already familiar with them. Weather helps to indicate location: shifts inform light and shadow, while select photographs represent extreme conditions. New York endured wet snowfall during Fall\/Winter 2014 Fashion Week, and several photographs depict insiders protecting themselves from the elements. Taxis and buses, in addition to license plates, often become the only markers of place. Sixteen photographs taken at New York Fashion Week (eight from each album) show editors in front of iconic yellow taxis; similarly, red double-decker buses feature in several London photographs. Nonetheless, the vehicles\u2019 presence becomes naturalized as a scene of international mobilities and an advertisement for these cities as tourist destinations: not cities as lived but cities as discursively produced. The vehicles become a flattened and often blurred element. More than half of the photographs (56.1%) make visible the literal street and its referents (54.7% for Spring\/Summer 2014 and 57.3% for Fall\/Winter 2014). 349 photographs (48.1%) illustrate cars; 104 (29.8%) of these feature cars in a prominent position. 211 photographs (29.1%) contain traffic, parking, or directional signage, or barriers and traffic cones. 219 photographs (30.2%) depict subjects on or in the street, while 69 (31.5%) of these show an indicated crosswalk (Fig. 3). 174 photographs (24.0%) capture individuals close in front of an architectural structure, while half (50.1%) illustrate architectural structures in the distance. 33 photographs (5.0%) were coded as \u201cperspective shots\u201d that Ton took from the middle of a street, creating a striking aesthetic that recalls a modern-era fascination with urban architecture (Fig. 4).<\/p>\n Figure 3<\/p>\n Ton\u2019s photographs frequently convey a sense of placelessness, similar to those of The Sartorialist<\/em>. Esther Rosser observes that photographs\u2019 location in the dominant fashion capitals lends clout to the insiders who appear (161; see also Titton, \u201cStyling the Street\u201d 132). However, status is communicated through the fact<\/em> of the subjects\u2019 location and not the cities\u2019 specific architectural features. I coded 343 photographs (47.2%) as \u201cstreetscape,\u201d in which elements of the urban setting comprised significant additional space in the frame or were otherwise instrumental to the composition (Fig. 5). This percentage is consistent across seasons (51.3% for Spring\/Summer 2014 and 43.8% for Fall\/Winter 2014). Historical architecture with friezes and columns reads as European but not location-specific: it increases the cachet of the locations as museum cities. It suffices that the architecture appears to be antiquated and European. 76 photographs (10.5%) capture subjects in front of walls or doors, whose colours and textures reflect or contrast with their outfits (11.5% for Spring\/Summer 2014 and 10.0% for Fall\/Winter 2014). 20 of these photographs (26.3%) feature a brick wall. One particular beige brick wall in New York (Fall\/Winter 2014) matches an insider\u2019s parka (Fig. 6). In a subsequent photograph, it offers a plain canvas to foreground Russian fashion editor Miroslava Duma\u2019s flower-printed coat (Fig. 7). 404 photographs (55.7%) use lens blur to render streets indiscernible or erase them (53.1% for Spring\/Summer 2014 and 58.0% for Fall\/Winter 2014). 129 photographs (17.8%) contain sculptures, walls, architectural structures, landmarks, or (torn) street posters or advertisements that bear similar or opposite colour palettes and\/or textures to subjects\u2019 outfits.<\/p>\n In 18 photographs (9 from each album), from New York and Milan, Ton juxtaposes ensembles with graffiti. Banet-Weiser examines street art\u2019s \u201cambivalent\u201d role, both contentious and productive, in cities\u2019 cultural positioning: \u201cstreet art\u2019s association with graffiti and tagging \u2026 are not only deeply racialized in the US imagination but also fetishized for their links to racial otherness\u201d (101). Graffiti emerged out of the 1970s and 1980s US hip-hop scene in response to the encroachment of commercial culture onto public spaces and the disenfranchisement of Black and Latino neighbourhoods under New York\u2019s \u201curban \u2018renewal\u2019\u201d policies (Banet-Weiser 102). As \u201cfigures\u201d that rhetoricize urban spaces, such \u201ccalligraphies howl without raising their voices\u201d and resist photographic pinning down (de Certeau 102). Cities\u2019 use of street art to self-brand as creative<\/em>\u2014making it palatable for a white audience (Banet-Weiser 105)\u2014parallels photographers\u2019 use of graffiti to mark streets and persons as fashionable. In a Fall\/Winter 2014 Milan photograph, Ton frames Dello Russo in profile in a fringed black jacket and pencil skirt in front of black, curled scrawl (Fig. 8). In another, a woman stands in a white trench coat (printed with red lips) and embellished red heels in front of a yellow wall with red graffiti (Fig. 9). The tagged walls invoke \u201curban\u201d hip-hop aesthetics to create a class contrast that prioritizes the expensive fashions.<\/p>\n Figure 5<\/p>\n\n\t\tMethods<\/strong><\/h5>\n
\n<\/strong><\/p>\nThe Fashion Month Scene<\/strong><\/h5>\n
The Rise of Online Street Style Photography<\/strong><\/h5>\n
Fashion on the \u201cStreet\u201d<\/strong><\/h5>\n
Street Style in Discourse<\/strong><\/h5>\n
Street Style in Photographs<\/strong><\/h5>\n
Analysis: Tommy Ton\u2019s Cities as Streetscapes<\/strong><\/h5>\n
Figure 2<\/p>\n<\/p>\nFigure 4<\/p>\n<\/p>\n