The blog of street styles

It began with a blogger sharing images of stylish people he'd come across on the street - and suddenly passersby are the new supermodels. Jess Cartner-Morley reports . Designers, trends and hemlines rise and fall, but the love affair between high fashion and street style has endured for decades.

Back when Yves Saint Laurent was lifting colour combinations from the Moroccan streets and putting them on Paris catwalks, the affair seemed a risque one: a Lady and the Tramp liaison between the untouchably glossy denizens of the best-dressed lists and the rougher edges of fashion, the street corners where real life meets low life.

But now our perceptions of who and what is stylish have been turned upside down.

The models and actresses whose images were once revered are now Botoxed and Photoshopped on TV screens and billboards, and plastered, with warts-and-all frankness, over tabloids, magazines and the internet.

Just a decade ago, the vogue for photographing celebrities in supermarket car parks seemed intrusive; how innocent that concern seems now, in this age of minutely documented knickerless taxi rides. Traditional style icons have lost their mystery, in some cases their dignity and, in the process, their lustre.

On the sidewalks of Manhattan, the backlash is on its way. Armed with a Canon G5 camera, Scott Schuman, aka The Sartorialist, has created a photo blog that is required reading for the fashion industry - despite featuring no celebrities and barely any It bags.

With his portraits of real people who look great, Schuman "has firmly established himself as a fashion authority", says Natalie Massenet, founder of Net-a-Porter.com and a pivotal figure in the fashion world.

"We are huge fans of The Sartorialist at Net-a-Porter. The photography is sharp, the commentary astute, and we love that it celebrates individual style."

The celebration of the individual is at the core of what makes The Sartorialist different. By avoiding pigeonholing the subject into "tribes", Schuman has subverted all the rules dividing street style from high style. What's more, he may just have stumbled on the only people left who have the mystery necessary to capture our imagination as style icons: normal people, not the ones in reality TV shows, but the ones in real life.

Two years after launching his blog, Schuman is now listed in Time magazine as one of the most influential figures in the world of design. Each day, 50,000 people visit his site. Next month, the Danziger gallery in New York will host the first show of portraits from the blog, with prints going for $1,200 apiece.

Every morning, Schuman sets off to walk the streets of Manhattan, waiting for someone to catch his eye. "On a typical day I'm out for five hours, and I shoot maybe three or four people."

"When I see someone, I wait until they are in a spot where I think I can get a good picture. I try not to follow them more than two blocks without approaching them, though."

Part of his modus operandi is that he himself always dresses "pretty stylish. When you stop someone in the street and say, 'I have a fashion blog, I really like your outfit, can I take your picture?' the first thing they do is look at what you're wearing. They size you up and then make their decision."

Schuman, 40, grew up in Indiana with "no access to fashion". As a teenager he watched a lot of sport; often, when his favourite athletes were interviewed, they'd talk about fashion and labels, and at 13 or 14 he caught the bug through them.

"Also I was just getting into girls, and they were interested in fashion, so it all kind of hung together."

After studying fashion, he spent 15 years in marketing and PR before leaving to focus on photography. "I loved my tailoring classes at college, but I didn't want to be a designer, because I wasn't as good as the designers I wanted to be like. I love taking pictures with my camera."

The story of The Sartorialist is a story about the democratisation of fashion. A sartorialist, Schuman says, is "someone who executes a look really well, even if it's not a look I'd have chosen. I shoot everything from young guys in Dior to old guys."

Teenagers swap their look every few weeks, their allegiance being to constant change rather than entrenched sartorial positions. And trends are no longer just for the young: these days, middle-aged women buy disposable fashion, too, thanks to the likes of Topshop and Primark.

Schuman's technique is to apply classic rules of design to street style. He is obsessed with fit, and how a perfectly fitting garment helps the wearer project their best self; he is obsessed with harmony of colour and with proportion, from sleeve length to trouser width.

He likens himself to an ex-athlete taking pictures at a football game: his background means that he notices details others might miss.

In his notes accompanying a portrait, Schuman often comments on stylistic differences between countries. Apropos of a photo of a man in maroon socks, say, he launches into a spiel about how American men match their socks to their trousers, while Italian men like to contrast theirs with trousers and shoes, while Englishmen wear maroon socks with everything. Paris, he says, has fantastically stylish women, but the men aren't so great. Milan is "all about the men - they look spectacular". New York is more athletic, colourful, with a big vintage element. "In London I love the kids doing the 80s thing. It's all about the mix."

Schuman now has a guest blog on Style.com, the most popular website for catwalk show coverage, and travels to Paris, Milan and London to photograph those who attend the shows. So much so that, according to designer Antonio Berardi, for the industry at show time, "The Sartorialist reads like a who's who, but for those in the know."

"I love going to the shows," Schuman says. "This is the Superbowl of style." But is he not taking the easy way out? After all, standing outside a Prada show and looking for great outfits is hardly finding a rough diamond on the street.

He disagrees. "I might shoot a woman who's 45 and runs a magazine and has great style, and a girl who's 22, who's under pressure to make a name for herself, and who has got to do that through her style. At assistant level these people don't necessarily have money, so she's got to do it from H&M. To me, that is real life."

Note: thesartorialist.blogspot.com