Ni'ma Ford, outside Herve Leger by Max Azria, Lincoln Center

Outside HBA, Wall St, New York

DJ Stiletto, 2 Looks at New York Fashion Week

Sonia, Walnut St, Philadelphia

When I asked Sonia how she would describe her style, she shrugged and made a face. "You don't, in other words," I suggested. "Moody," she came out with at last. In this shot she's wearing a J. Crew denim shirt over a NINObrand top, a pair of Mother jeans, and Isabel Marant boots. I asked her to bring her bike into the shot, because, as all street style photographers know, bikes make the best accessories. 

Photographer outside Tibi, 15th St, New York

Kayla in a Goorin Bros hat, Walnut St, Philadelphia

Devon, Headhouse Square, Philadelphia

Philadelphia Street Style: Joe, off 16th Street

I was positioned next to the alleyway on 16th Street, between Walnut and Sansom, laying my claim on this graffitied wall and waiting for somebody interesting to pass, when Joe and the woman he was with walked right into the spot I'd been staking out. He had her take a couple of iPhone photos of him leaning against the wall, and I thought, "I want those photos too." So when they were done, I took my own. These days, with the advent of smart phones and the international obsession with selfies, we are all our own street style photographers.

In this shot, Joe's going for a classic hip hop look in a Hudson shirt, a pair of acid-wash Smokehouse jeans, and some high-top Adidas. He describes his style as "urban" and says he is "open to all music."   

Philadelphia Street Style: Michael, Chestnut Street

Michael's outfit is the perfect illustration of how utterly normal it has become to mix fast fashion and high fashion brands. His hat is Forever 21. His T-shirt is H&M. The jeans are Pac Sun, the boots Timberland. And the flannel shirt tied around his waste, it's Ralph Lauren. That watch, it's a motherf@#king Rolex.  

Michael described his style to me as "however I feel in the morning." 

"And how did you feel this morning?" I asked.

"Sunny day, straw hat," he said. In general, he likes to keep it "heavy" and "slouchy," a little bit of casual, a little bit of class.

Philadelphia Street Style: Milana, Walnut Street

I first took Milana's photo back in August of 2012, almost exactly two years ago. Goddamn, I've been doing this for a long time now! 

In this shot, Milana is wearing H&M head to toe, a fact that seemed to surprise her as much as me. The necklace and bracelets, however, she "borrowed" from her mom. That's how she gets a lot of her accessories. She sees something her mom has, asks for it, and it slowly works its way into her wardrobe. She describes her style as "eclectic" and "all over." Her musical taste, she confesses is simply "whatever's on the radio." She seemed to feel slightly embarrassed about that. I just shrugged. "Who's got time to look for new music these days?" I asked.

Philadelphia Street Style: Taheira, 17th Street

I didn't realize I'd taken Taheira's picture before until after I stopped her, walking down Walnut Street this past Wednesday. And even then, I didn't quite recognize her. There was just a flash of familiarity that came over me. You can't blame me for that. Most of Center City looks familiar these days. And I've taken a lot of pictures these past two and a half years. Besides, Taheira looked quite a lot of different the last time I ran into her, back in February of 2012. Her style has most definitely evolved.

In these shots, Taheira is wearing a thrifted shirt over an H&M skirt. She didn't used to like H&M, she told me, or at least, she didn't want to like it. But then she saw some of the cute outfits her friends bought, and well, you know, they just kind of seduced her into shopping there. The bag is from Urban Outfitters. The sandals are Birkenstocks. "They're the cutest ugly shoes," said Taheira. 

Taheira describes her style as "versatile, classic, and simple." As for music, she listens to a lot of rap and R&B. PartyNextDoor and YG are some of her top picks at the moment. 

Philadelphia Street Style: Alex, Chestnut St

Alex, when I stopped her, was wearing a blouse from Urban Outfitters, shorts from American Apparel, and "some old Oxfords," sans socks.She describes her style as "maybe alternative punkish" and "sometimes hipster-y." Her musical taste runs punk and indie, and she's been listening to bands like Gag and Merchandise lately, with a bit of My Bloody Valentine thrown into the mix. 

Philadelphia Street Style: Emily, Chestnut St

Emily describes her style as "bohemian rocker." "But I always like to switch it up," she says, "and do something a little weird. If an indie rocker and an alien had a baby, that's me." 

"And am I to guess from your description of your style," I asked, "that you’re an indie rock kind of person?" 

"I am an indie rock kind of person," she confirmed.

Emily is originally from Florida and came to Philly to study. She noticed right away that the city had a bit more grit to its style than she was used to. That's fine with her. "They like to be a bit on the dirtier side," she says of Philadelphians, "which I think just totally suits the city." In Florida, it's "a lot more clean-cut and like '80s styles." "Very vibrant," she added. Since she moved here, she told me, she's been wearing a lot more earth tones.

When I stopped her, Emily was wearing a chiffon blouse along with vintage jewelry that her grandma picked up from overseas. Her shorts are from Urban Outfitters. Her belt is from Free People. The boots are Lucky Brand. 

Philadelphia Street Style: Evan, Sydenham St

While my camera's in the shop I'm continuing to dig through old Lightroom vaults and find photos that, for some reason or other, I never posted. Here's one of Evan, a Suitsupply employee I stopped during his lunch break. I think I decided not to post this before, because he just looks so squeaky clean in this shot, and I don't really do squeaky clean. I prefer at least a modicum of grit. I'm a "street style" photographer after all, and streets are dirty. But perhaps this is a prejudice I ought to work to overcome.

In case you haven't already guessed, Evan is wearing Suitsupply, head to toe, in this image. I heard Tim Gunn recommend this brand to Terry Gross on Fresh Air not that long ago, so you know they must be good. Or at least comping lots of clothes to Tim Gunn. 

Philadelphia Street Style: Lisa, 17th St

Here's a shot from a couple of months back that I never quite got around to posting. I've also included, for your reading pleasure, a complete transcript of my interview with her. Enjoy.

Me: What are you wearing today, Lisa?

Lisa: A dress.

End of transcript.

Philadelphia Street Style: Najé, Walnut St

Last week I put a new 32GB compact flash card in my Nikon D700, and it promptly stopped working. The "killer card" apparently short-circuited something in the camera. So I sent it off to a repair facility in New York. I felt depressed. I had lost my primary tool for image-making. But I was not content to sit idle. I wanted to shoot, and I wanted to feel liberated from the material dependency I had on my DSLR. Objects be damned! 

So I hit the streets of Center City with an old friend, my trusty Panasonic Lumix GF-1. It's an early generation of a micro-four-thirds with a 20mm pancake lens attached. Long-time readers of Urban Fieldnotes may remember that it's the camera I started this blog with. Two years back I upgraded, frustrated that I was unable to adequately capture the crystal clear figure with a blurred out background look so fundamental to street style imagery these days. But I'm a better photographer than I was then, I figured. And I have the power of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom at my disposal. Figured it was worth seeing whether I could produce better images today with that camera than I could way back then.These images of Najé are the results of that experiment. 

So what do you think? I'm pretty happy with them. Sure, the blur isn't as lush, but they've still got punch. They're still sharp and bold. There's still a separation of elements and reasonably shallow depth of field. Back in the day I could never quite get these full-body shots right. Parallax distorted the bodies so that the heads looked overlarge. Aperture priority rendered the lighting flat and overly shadowed. Now it's just not that hard to compensate for the limits of the lens by crouching and shooting upwards. And I would never condescend to use aperture priority. It's manual or bust, baby. Even with this dinky, amateur camera, correct exposure compensation makes all the difference. I'm beginning to buy into the old photographer credo that camera's don't matter that much. Photographers do. But only just beginning. Because let's be frank: cameras do make a tremendous difference. Otherwise photographers wouldn't drop ten grand on their street style equipment.

Najé in these pictures is wearing an old pair of biker boots that she's had "for about seven years now." They're one of her favorite pieces. The graphic T-shirt she's had for about three years. The shorts used to be her favorite pants, but they started to get lots of holes and wear in them. Typically, she likes that look. She describes her style in general as "distressed." She tends to like clothes more the longer she's had them. But with the pants, "it started to get extreme." So she grabbed a pair of scissors and started cutting. No ruler. No planning in advance. Here are the results. The vest, by the way, she got at Forever 21 a few years back. "It used to be really shiny, now it just looks old. So I like it more now of course."

Najé considers Zöe Kravitz one of her fashion icons. She likes how relaxed her style is, how breezy and care-free. She's "like obsessed" with Kravitz' band, Lolawolf. She's also into Phantogram, the Arcade Fire, and a variety of other indie bands. "I'm really alternative, I guess," she told me. "I’m kind of like all over the place," she went on. "I don’t I like extremes, though." With music and with fashion, she prefers the casual and the comfortable, stuff with good structure that gets better as it ages. 

Philadelphia Street Style: Shereece in Vintage Jason Wu, Walnut St

Shereece got this entire silk Jason Wu ensemble from the second-hand clothing chain Buffalo Exchange "for like 15 bucks." The pillbox purse she picked up at Family Dollar for four bucks. Shereece works at a '50s clothing boutique herself, so she's always on the look out for a vintage steal. "This [outfit]," she told me, "kind of fit the mold." She describes her style as "all over the place." "If it feels good," she says, "I'll wear it." But what feels good for her tends towards the cute and the retro, Bettie Page meets Holly Golightly. As for her musical taste, she listens to "pretty much everything," she says. "Right now I’m super heavy into Lady Gaga, but I’ll listen to anything. I’m very open to anything. If it sounds good – if it makes me feel good, I’m all about it."

I hear a lot of this kind of casual, "whatever," "anything that makes me feel good" comment about style when I'm on the streets, and I have no reason to doubt that this, in fact, is how quite a lot of people decide what to wear or to listen to. Their choices are emotional, intuitive, rooted in a sort of everyday hedonism that has little to do with complex symbolism or class-based distinctions. And yet, I can't help but notice that peoples' "comfort zones" are decidedly limited. People may wear whatever feels good, but not all that much, when it comes right down to it, "feels good." We wear what fits our self concept. We wear what we associate with feeling confident or in control. We wear what we've always worn or what those around us or who we admire wear. And when we do so, it feels good. It feels natural. It feels like us. That feeling — of naturalness, of comfort, of "just being ourselves" — has a pattern and a structure to it, even if it is continually evolving. And it always is evolving. Our sense of comfort changes as fashion changes around us. We continually position ourselves, consciously or not, in relation to the fashion of others. Our style, that is, has a history. My job as an anthropologist of style is to begin to see the arch of that history and to capture it — whether through photos or write-ups — as best I can.   

Philadelphia Street Style: Machy, Chestnut St, and the Politics (or Lack Thereof) of Wearing H&M

As a cultural anthropologist, interested in the symbolic functions of fashion, I've been wondering lately: what does it mean for someone to wear H&M or Zara? What does it say about who they are as a person. Machy here is wearing H&M head to toe. He's not alone. Just about everyone I stop on the streets of Philly is wearing at least one item from one of these ubiquitous fast fashion companies. So here is my provisional answer: it means nothing.

The material culture scholars Daniel Miller and Sophie Woodward put out a very readable and fascinating book a couple of years back called Blue Jeans: The Art of the Ordinary. In it they argue that jeans may be the first "post-semiotic" garment. Everyone wears them, rich or poor, Democrat or Republican, urban or rural. The fact of wearing them in itself conveys very little about a person. People wear jeans, in fact, because they don't want to put much thought into what they're wearing. They wear them to make their pants a non-issue. They wear jeans because everyone wears jeans.

I wonder if you could make a similar argument about fast fashion brands like H&M and Zara. Are these the first post-semiotic clothing brands? Such a broad range of people I stop on the street wear H&M and Zara it seems impossible to generalize about these people as some kind of demographic. I've stopped punks in H&M, hip hoppers in H&M, part-time drag performers like Machy in H&M. Wearing H&M says nothing about one's race, ethnicity, politics, sexuality, or taste in music. Wearing H&M does not define someone as this kind of person or that. H&M ain't Prada or Hood by Air. Wearing its products isn't meant to send a message. 

If wearing H&M means anything at all it means "I don't have a shit ton of money, so I buy designer-ish clothes for cheap. I'm not ashamed of that. I'm not proud of that. It's just how it is." As Machy put it, "[I shop there] because it's affordable and I'm on a budget." End of story. 

Machy, by the way, describes his style as "Very urban...and slightly hipsterish, I guess. Just laid back, go with the flow." When I further inquired as to what Machy meant by "hipster," he elaborated: "[a]wake up, probably wearing the same pants I wore yesterday kind of style." This is H&M in a nutshell. It is a brand for people who want to look cool, but don't want to invest too much time, energy, or money into the prospect. It's a purchase and move on with your life kind of brand.

Philadelphia Street Style: Leah, Chestnut St

Leah is a stylist and choreographer on her way to work when I stopped her. She describes her style as "chic, classy, and very outgoing and fun." She's influenced by looks from the 1920s and 1950s, and likes wearing things that can make an easy transition from daytime to night. 

As we were conducting the interview after our shoot, some dude with a dinky DSLR came up to us, interrupted, and asked Leah if she might be interested in modeling for him. She seemed kind of annoyed with him and disinterested, but was polite anyway and took down his information. It's true that Leah is a great model to work with, but dude, your timing was way off!

In these shots, Leah is wearing a dress from a vintage store that she got "for like ten bucks." I'd tell you what the shoes were, but I couldn't make out the brand from the transcript. A marching drum core was moving down the street past us, rendering the whole interview process much more difficult than normal. Philadelphia, don't you know that you're supposed to stop what you're doing and just be quiet already when I'm conducting interviews? I mean, geez, I've got a job to do here!

Philadelphia Street Style: Jordan, Walnut St

Jordan is a professional stylist from West Philadelphia. She describes her style as "a little eclectic, fun, chic, and… all me." Being a stylist, she says, "makes [her] a little bit more aware of what's going on" in the fashion world. But it also makes her more concerned about standing out from it. There's a fine line, she explains, between being in style and "being trendy." A stylist has to learn how to navigate that line effectively. 

When I stopped her on Walnut Street, Jordan was a bright pop of color on a cloudy summer day. This top is a DIY-job on a dress from Old Navy.

Her jewelry are from H&M and Pier One. The cut-offs used to be a pair of Calvin Kleins. I guess they still are.

The bag, in bold bright orange, is Kenneth Cole. 

These shoes are Via Spiga. The sunglasses (in the image up top) are Retrosuperfuture.

Jordan sees Philly's fashion scene as on the rise. It's funky, eclectic, and diverse. "Philly to me," she says, "is sort of on the trendy side for the most part, but then I love when I hit like South Street or Avenue of the Arts and then you just see all walks of life wearing whatever it is that makes them happy. It’s my favorite part. It just reminds me of New York."