KEY POINTS:
So you think you could be the next big thing? You're looking hot today and all your friends are regularly impressed by your stunning sense of style. Or maybe you're incredibly fashionable but no one else seems to get your look.
Well, best get yourself on to the internet - and we mean that quite literally. Because it's not just fashion magazines telling you what to wear and providing examples of the most stylish styles. It's also your friends, your neighbours, the people down the road, the people down country and, if you're that way inclined, yourself.
With the various digital networking communities on which you can become a website celebrity overnight - online places like You Tube, My Space and Flickr - a new breed of fashion website lets you dictate your style to the masses.
The latest example is the aptly named Share Your Look. In a slightly teenage turn of phrase the website declares to new users: "You've got style. Share it. The season's most anticipated collection? Yours. Be the next global fashion editor and help others with their style."
You register at the website, co-founded by bona fide American fashion writer, Melissa Ceria, then you either post pictures of your best looks and best garments or check out other people's.
You can see what people around the world are wearing, sorted by, among other categories, look, price or nationality. The most styles have been posted by the French, followed by Americans and Australians. As yet, there's no New Zealand representation - perhaps you'll be the first.
At the bottom of each picture, website visitors can either choose from a collection of adolescent compliments - sassy, so chic, sexy or flattering - or style tips, try layering or add colour, accessories or high heels.
It wasn't always this way on the internet. Formerly fashion websites only came in one flavour, probably best described as fashion editor. Relatively undemocratic, they'd tell you the latest news, comment on runway shows, post editorial shoots and give wardrobe guidance.
There's no way the average reader would tell this lot to put on some higher heels. But now that the culture of putting your life online in various ways has reached the fashion world, everyone gets to be their own leader of style.
Generally, all these sites are based on the premise that the best stylists walk the streets. Of course, you'll need to toss up whether you want advice from the experts or the girl on the street - even if it is the Parisian boulevard outside the Miu Miu show.
And there are possibly even more interesting websites around if you really want to see what the international glamouristas are wearing this season, or even next season.
So we come to joy of the online social page and the street style blog. Not all of these are created equal, but the best are some of the most useful places to check out what the coolest people you don't know are doing with clothes.
For online party pages you can't go past the Cobra Snake. Based in Los Angeles, social photographer Mark Hunter has made an online career of going to the hippest parties, gigs, shows and events in his hometown, as well as New York and elsewhere.
He came up with the idea in 2003 when he apparently drafted a manifesto that read a little like this: "People try to look cool for a reason, to get noticed, but they put so much effort into their look and they should get more out of it." This website will take pictures of all the hipsters in the scene.
The result is a huge archive of LA's most beautiful, most excruciatingly cool scenesters going out, getting drunk, dancing, out, getting drunk, dancing, fondling each other and just generally looking excruciatingly cool. The Cobra Snake site's regulars are not perving, they're checking out the latest fashion statements.
In an interview, Hunter insisted he's no arbiter of fashion. Well, not on purpose, anyway. He just picks the right people to photograph.
"When I go to a club, I'm not telling people what they should wear. But I know various trend research companies have been stealing my photos for presentations."
And he has received emails from fans outside LA asking that he take more pictures of shoes so everyone can see what kinds of footwear young women are wearing.
Locally similar sites are Neon Sleep, as well as the social page shots on the Auckland-based music website Cheese on Toast.
Another good opportunity for online style spotting is one of the many, mainly pictorial, style blogs that are starting up. One of the best is that run by The Sartorialist. It came about when Scott Schuman, a fashion industry agent, realised that the nattily outfitted people he saw on the street in New York were better dressed and more inspiring to him than the models he saw in the magazines.
So he started a fashion blog - but instead of writing a lot of pretentious twaddle about nothing, Schuman posted photos and a few descriptive lines about the stylish people he'd seen on New York's streets.
As a result of this website's success and, no doubt, Schuman's excellent choice of subject, he was flown to the last round of European shows to produce a photographic people-on-the-street-outside-the fashion-shows blog for Style.com, the website run by influential magazine company, Conde Nast.
It worked.
Anyone who follows the runway reports will tell you the photos by the Sartorialist were almost more exciting than the runway shows, perhaps because they featured real people.
Rather than the outlandish runway styles which set the trends, you saw how fashion industry insiders put the clothes together in innovative but accessible ways that meant they could still catch a cab to the show.
A quick peruse of the site this week shows it's back to street style - you might be inspired by the girl who knots two scarves together to make one hip, grungey neckpiece, the skater boy in tight jeans wearing brightly coloured, non-matching sneakers, or the old fellow with the silver safety pin for a tie pin.
Schuman isn't ageist or sexist - his photos of a dapper elderly American man selling books on the street or an elegant older French woman outside the Vuitton show will tell you more about style than a million sassy young things all dressed like Zoebots (young actresses such as Nicole Richie and Lindsay Lohan, who take fashion advice from Hollywood stylist Rachel Zoe).
Anyway rest assured, whatever the reason for the ongoing popularity of these party and social, style sharing or street spotting websites, one thing is certain. Pretty soon you'll be able to ask the whole world whether your bum looks big in that.
OTHER SITES TO CHECK
www.mystylediary.com - similar to Share Your Look and was around before the latter
www.fashmatch.com - choose a garment and let other styley web surfers tell you how they'd wear it
www.stilinberlin.com - the title translates to style in Berlin and it's similar to the Sartorialist's blog in New York, except it's based in Germany. The same goes for all the following except they're in different countries
Any of these sites have links to further street style blogs in other cities:
www.facehunter.blogspot.com - Paris
www.streetconfetti.blogspot.com- Lisbon
www.theclothesproject.blogspot.com- Tokyo
www.stockholmstreetstyle.blogg.se - Stockholm
