With fashion weeks on a pause of indeterminate length, the fate of street style hangs in limbo.
Legendary street-style photographer Shoichi Aoki has a fix: Today, he is releasing issues 1 through 100 of his essential ’80s and ’90s zine Street online for purchase as e-books.
Available on his website, the magazines are listed in sets of 10 for $30.50. All 100 issues can also be purchased for $278. Aoki might be most famous for his other magazine, FRUiTS, founded in 1995, which chronicled the daily outfits of Tokyo’s most compelling citizens.
But Street is not to be missed.
The magazine, started in 1985, is one of the earliest documents of Fashion Week style.
Photographed on the sidewalks of New York, Paris, Belgium, and London, Street showed what fashion crowds were wearing long before #ootd, #spon, and #twinning—and what a gift it is.
The first issue from 1985 features a person in all-black, Yohji Yamamoto–worthy layers and a velvet beret with a crystal bow on it.
Other covers star flea-market pickers, nightclub revellers, postapocalyptic ravers, and one radical couple with silver face paint. Some issues chronicle specific fashion shows and events. Issue 44 is totally dedicated to the scene at Vivienne Westwood’s show. Issue 48 is at Jean Paul Gaultier’s.
Issue 69 shows the queue for Christopher Nemeth’s London show, with grungy ravers clad in nubbly knits and bombers.
Against the high gloss—and occasional contrived nature—of contemporary street-style photography, the casualness, authenticity, and ease of Aoki’s images are a revelation.
Remember how we dressed before every person had a camera in their pocket? By digitizing his project and making it available online, Aoki has the potential to turn a whole new generation on to the allure of true personal style.
It’s only one click away!
[Source: Vogue]
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