The Arrival

I’ve waited too long for my copy of Scott Schuman’s The Sartorialist book to come. But it’s here! There’s a good 450 pages (roughly) of his fabulous photographs, some you would have seen from his blog and some not. There’s very minimal copy, but where there is, I was eager to know more about him. At times, he gets a little preachy, but I absolutely understand where his frustration is coming from. When we’re flipping through a magazine or sifting through a rack at a department store, we often categorize things into two – “good” and “bad”. Or “interesting” and “uninteresting”. You get the drift. When we do that, we aren’t really assessing or seeing the thing for what it is. Although it’s hard not to sift through big stores like Zara because it’s jam packed with so much items, sometimes we need to just stop and really see! But nobody can blame anybody…we’re bombarded with so much information these days its hard not glaze over and become easily dismissive.



Anyways, this photo of the old lady here has got to be my favourite. I’m really glad he put this photo in the book. This lady here to me is the definition of what a real lady should look like. She’s simple, classy, minimal in accessories and isn’t posing all that much – natural. I bet you if we find her at a cafe, she’d be giving off the exact same aura as she is here in the photograph.
oooMy thought of topic for today….how far have we gone into the world of social networking? It’s huge right? Facebook, Myspace, twitter, etc. Have we gone so far into perfecting our online profiles that we’ve blurred the lines between the cyber-life and the physical-life? How much action do we take in our physical lives to cater to the cyber life, and how much action do we take in our cyber lives to cater to our physical life? In other words, which life is taking precedence? How do we know when we’ve gone too far, and how do we readjust ourselves to balance the two?
oooSchuman has found that balance. His subjects are relaxed, natural and real. Yet you know with any artists’ work there is always creative processing. I think what makes his work so influential is that he presents to us an imperfect beauty, in a superficial industry. It’s nice to see people and fashion that is genuine.