“I am fashion” – Coco Chanel

Street fashion, as self-photographed by stylish individualists,  is increasingly becoming the successor  to mainstream fashion media with individuals turning online for visual inspiration, rather then traditional fashion magazines. With an explosion of cheap consumer technology and free online publishing  platforms, people have the means to immediately share their fashionable observations in near real-time. A stylish democracy of sorts.

So far, this creative self-expression has been documented through online networks, street photographer sites, and personal blogs. See the examples below: LookBook, The Sartorialist, and Vogue’s TweetChic (which is more capturing thought of fashion insiders then their photos).

However, wouldn’t it be great to see documentation in real time with less effort (ie., no need to plug your camera and upload?) – something as easy as whipping out your cellphone and capturing a shot on the street? Living in New York, I see fashion as divided by different neighborhood tribes – East Village, SoHo, Brooklyn, Upper East Side, Harlem, Meatpacking District, etc.

Plans: Explore MMS, extracting caption data and, perhaps, geo-location data, and extend Street Snaps so it can be subdivided by neighborhood so people can peek at New York’s unique styles. Adapt the SnapStyle website so that it can be easily viewable in a mobile webviewer, which would be great when after people submit their snapshots, they can then view it on their smartphones.

So far, from the documentation I’ve been reading, Apple doesn’t include EXIF data when photos are snapped with 3rd party iPhone apps but there appears to be some workarounds. That’s going to be an area of exploration.

Execution: Explore photo submission process, so users can be filtered by neighborhood (EXIF data?) or by self-captioning their location? How can we provide easier to find, readble caption information? Currently, I use the <title> tag within the <img> tag so when the cursor hovers, the caption data is seen there. I will have to explore Webkit and JQTouch.

Shawn’s Advice: ”Come up with a midterm project idea, talk with potential collaborators. Document and describe the idea on your blog and prepare to discuss it in class next week. Your documentation/description should include what the idea is, why you want to do it and a diagram of how it will work (wireframes, napkin drawings, etc..). “