Communications student Loane Concy Clementia recently stood outside the Rabanne show at Paris Fashion Week, wearing a black bra, a white lace and satin skirt and a white fur bomber off the shoulder. She doesn’t have a ticket for the show, but she’s happily posing for photographers outside. The 21-year-old has already done the same outside Balmain and Acne Studios that day, and has plans later to stand outside Rick Owens. She’s been doing this every fashion week for three years.
“I just go out in the morning and do the full day,” she says. She collects the photos taken of her from photographers or finds them on Instagram. “I have a degree in sewing and fashion design. I used to make clothes just for street style. I stopped [that] a little but I’m coming back this summer. It’s all about my passion for fashion!”
The communications student isn’t alone in her quest for photo ops — and proximity to the fashion industry — outside fashion shows. Outside Rick Owens, makeup artist Cannelle, who moved to Paris one year prior, says she volunteered at fashion week last season and so this season wanted to be involved again. “I just got up this morning, put on an outfit and thought why not,” she says. The outfit isn’t Rick, but is in line with the designer’s aesthetic. She plans to reshare the photos on her socials after, to show off her look.
It’s a sign of how much the street style scene has evolved since the early blog days, from Scott Schuman’s The Sartorialist to Tommy Ton’s Jak and Jil, which followed in the steps of Bill Cunningham’s street style work for The New York Times. In 2006/2007, Style.com (now Vogue Runway) hired Schuman, who had launched The Sartorialist in 2005. The fashion crowd loved seeing photos of themselves on the site, much as they did in the parties section, and a new traffic engine surrounding fashion month content was born.
Photo: Phil Oh
At the time, those photographed outside the shows were the ones attending them: editors, buyers, the odd celebrity. These days, you can count on a mix of those there to do their job (the usual suspects, plus some influencers), many more celebrities, often dressed head-to-toe by the brand whose show they’re attending, and swans without tickets, dressed to the nines, there to see and be seen.
Both Schuman and Ton are still regulars on the fashion month circuit, but the street style machine in which they operate has changed vastly. Instagram rapidly expanded street style’s scope, driving a surge in both photographers and subjects (most of whom are influencers, or aspiring to be). Many of the photographers outside shows today got their start with Instagram accounts and adjacent blogs. Vogue publishes daily roundups of the best street style in each fashion week city, captured by photographer Phil Oh. The galleries continue to be a big traffic driver.