I look at several street fashion blogs semi-regularly, but I sometimes find them frustrating. A lot of them seem to be shot guerilla-style – very little posing and bad lighting so that you can’t even really see what the person is wearing, much less be impressed by it – and with little if no commentary. And I know that many, many people love the Sartorialist, but I am not all that interested in what he thinks about the people he photographs. Also, his taste is sooo conservative and he only seems interested in thin, good-looking people who are wearing, you know, designer clothes. That’s why I like Hel-Looks so much. It has pictures of interestingly dressed Finnish people (mostly young but sometimes older people and children) and, believe me, they are never conservative or boring. Each photo is accompanied by a paragraph of the subject talking about the outfit and his or her philosophy of dressing. Some of them are pretty much what you’d expect – the clothes came from such-and-such shop and my style inspiration is a famous person with “good style” – but sometimes they are wonderfully off the wall. Lots of people wear second hand or homemade clothes, often as a response to obsessive consumerism. Lots of items are borrowed or handed down from parents or grandparents. One guy says he only wears denim. People seem to have strong views on colour and use it to respond to seasonal changes. Some of my favourite “inspirations”:
