Street style

Street style is a specific fashion style which comes originally from British fashion culture. It is a comprehensive approach to fashion and producing styles which intersect and differ from mainstream fashion considerations.

The “street” approach to style and fashion is oftentimes based upon individualism, not simply current fashion trends. Using street style methods, individuals demonstrate their multiple, negotiated identities, in addition to utilizing subcultural and intersecting styles or trends. This, in itself, is a performance, as it creates a space where identities can be explored through the act(ion) of dress.

Bill Cunningham (American photographer) for The New York Times, pointed street style out as a keen catalogue of ordinary people`s clothing. Also, he mentioned that streets much tell about fashion and people if you listen. According to him the best fashion show is coming to life every day on the streets.

Street style is an incredibly viral, instant, addictive facet of fashion that's changed lots of the ways in which fashion gets made and consumed. Its fast characteristic links it also to the term consumerism. How styles change over time, it also challenges the use of “fast fashion” in relation to the purchasing and wearing of clothing, as this conceals the complexities of practice.

Street style has always existed but it has become a phenomenon of 20th century. The increase in the standardization of life after World War II (Suburbanization, Mass marketing, the spread of television) may be linked to the appeal of "alternative" lifestyles for individuals in search of “identity”. Industrial production, particularly in the sphere of fashion, was not only the popularization of stylists’ tastes that move from high fashion, through pre`t-a`-porter, to the peripheries of the system. These were also tastes that originated among economically disfavored, marginal groups, the whole range of metropolitan tribes, that are able to trigger new fashion production and diffusion processes.

Phenomena of this kind have been studied for a long time in England and have revealed the importance of young people’s street styles during the post-war period, which may be linked to the generation of baby boomers, who came to represent a new sociocultural category-the "teenager" who has money to spend and be an important motivation on economic and cultural world.

The history of identity and the history of clothing run on two parallel rails. In this connection, street style works as a facilitator of group identity and subcultural cohesion. Since the close of World War II, Western culture has seen a dramatic decline in the significance of the traditional sociocultural divisions such as race, religion, ethnicity, regionalism, nationalism, in defining and limiting personal identity. The Tribe groupings, such as bikers, beats, and teddy boys in the 1950s; mods, Hippies, and Skinheads in the 1960s; headbangers, punks, and b-boys in the 1970s; and goths, new age travelers and ravers in the 1980s got dressed and unusual body decoration as an expression to create a sense of identity.

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