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"FacebookPinterest\n\nScott Schuman needs no introduction to any guy with even a marginal interest in fashion and an internet connection. As creator of the photo blog The Sartorialist, Schuman has, in just seven years, opened the floodgates for a new wave of widely digested style coverage, one that celebrates the individual over the fashion world's collective dictums each season. The Sartorialist has spawned plenty of imitators, including a few that could be considered competition, if such a thing exists in the democracy of street style coverage. But just as fashion in the digital age has had to constantly evolve, so too has Schuman, expanding his dialogue with readers from solely stylized visuals to added commentary and video clips and now, a twelve-part series with AOL. The photographer is teaming up with the site to usher in a new chapter of his brand starting this fall, one that sees Schuman going in front of the lens to document his process, subjects, and, ultimately, how he creates his Sartorialist world. We caught up with the man behind the lens at AOL's NewFronts (like TV Up Fronts! But for the internet!) to talk about stepping in front of the camera, what subjects inspire him most, and why fashion's old guard really needs to get on board with bloggers.\n\n\n\nGQ: How did The Sartorialist evolve into an AOL video series in the first place?\n\n Scott Schuman: I want to say it's been a long road, but that makes it sound like something I've really been working towards. The reality is that from pretty early, people saw the potential of something like this for a show. I had a lot of offers but I never picked one up. There was always a lot of interest, but there was always this element of, \"Oh, can you also help this girl in Omaha pick a prom dress?\" I wanted something that would fit into my lifestyle and help me tell a slightly deeper story about the photographs without taking me away from what I wanted to do. Then this thing from AOL came up in a format that I liked. On TV, say you go to two cities and get 15 minutes worth of good stuff, you've still got to fill up 22 minutes. I don't want to do that. I want to produce what I produce that I think is good.\n\nGQ: So there are no set parameters or narrative arc for each episode?\n\n Schuman: Yeah. So if it's three to five minutes, it's three to five minutes. On the internet, it doesn't really matter. You don't want too long or too short, but the story lets you tell where you need to be. That freedom is totally up to me about what I want to talk about, where I want to go, how I want it to fit into my life.\n\nGQ: Are you excited for your readers to see your process behind the scenes? It puts the photographs into a different context than what they would usually see, which is just the image.\n\n Schuman: I think it's very important that there's more depth to the photographs. I'm excited for the readers to see it because for a photograph like this, [holds up a page from his book The Sartorialist: Closer] I didn't even talk to that guy. He was on the phone, working construction... it was just a moment. If I had a film crew there, I would probably go up and say, \"Did you pick out all of this?\". Because if he wasn't covered in all this drywall stuff, he could go out to a club dressed like that. So there's a deeper story that with video, I would go do. People ask me if this is the next step of my career, and I don't know about that, but I think it just helps me tell the story in a different way. What I think what might be interesting is when I shoot, I don't like to get to know the people. They usually have an interesting story to tell, and they dress that way because they want to say something to the world. I don't always care. I like to keep my eye on the mystery and my own fantasy about it, and make the image that I see. I'm not a reporter; I take it whatever way I see it.\n\nGQ: Do you have any concern that revisiting images that you've taken will change how you or your readers perceive that image?\n\n Schuman: If I was trying to report a different story than what I see -- saying, \"this is the fact\" -- that would be different. That's fine, but it's not what I do. I'm taking these photographs in my romantic vision. I think it would be more interesting to find out if the reality is different. I remember one time in Australia I took a photograph of this guy, and Garance [Dor\u00E9, Schulman's girlfriend who runs the equally popular site garancedore.fr] was there with me, and the picture came out very masculine and tough. And then she had spoken to him and she said to me, \"No, he was actually very effeminate. That picture isn't like him at all.\" I think that's fascinating, and a big part of the show would be that difference between perception and reality.\n\n A preview of Schuman's upcoming AOL series \n\nGQ: Since 2005, you've obviously played a big role in building and contributing to street style culture. Could you have ever predicted that it would be what it is today and the impact it's had on the fashion world?\n\n Schuman: I know it sounds crazy to say, but I learned to do the absolute best I could do with no real idea of where it would go. I just wanted to go out everyday and take the best photo I could. That was the truest and most honest way in terms of my feelings of what I was seeing at that moment. I never really thought about it, but I always tried to prepare.\n\nGQ: What were your goals for the Sartorialist at the beginning? Have they shifted at all now that you're a multi-platform brand?\n\n Schuman: I don't think so. On Saturday I was on the bike by myself riding around Spanish Harlem and Washington Heights. It was just like the very first day I ever spent shooting. I think the only thing that's changed is my acceptance to capture images the way I see them, in a romantic way. I don't really care to tell the truth. If I see a girl, I want to shoot her the way I see her. And I always hated writing, but now I feel I have a format where I can talk about it that way.\n\nGQ: You've already curated two books worth of people with great personal style but now when you are shooting do you see as many people with truly individual style as you did starting out? Because there's global access to your photos and street style at large.\n\n Schuman: Yes, because like I said I spent literally the entire day on my bike shooting, riding from SoHo all the way up to Spanish Harlem and back. That changes a little bit when I go the shows, but the shows aren't all of what I do.\n\nGQ: As in, fashion folks can forget there's nine more months out the year that people are getting dressed up?\n\n Schuman: Right, And that's what I love to do. I don't think it affects the general population, but what you can see in the photographs that are really strong, is that it's about the clothes and they help to tell the story, but they're not the story. It's also their posture, the way they hold themselves, their personality. The great photographs are the ones where people hold themselves in a way that tells you about who they are. So the clothes are just a part of it, but the definition has to be there.\n\nGQ: You travel and shoot all over the world but do you have a favorite place to photograph subjects?\n\n Schuman: Milan. I like going to new places because they always surprise me but Milan has always felt like a second home because there's so much style in such a small area.\n\nGQ: What would you say is the biggest misconception about what you do and really street style in general that you're sick of hearing?\n\n Schuman: The only thing I'm tired of is the fashion establishment on the idea of blogs thinking, \"Who are all these kids taking pictures of themselves on the internet? They just want to be famous.\" I was just reading Fantastic Man and there was a story about Joe McKenna and he was saying that when he was young, he and a girlfriend of his would go and look all these fashion magazines, and then go to junk sales and get dressed up to take photos of each other to try to mimic the shoots that they saw in the magazines. And that's exactly what fashion blogs are now. If Joe McKenna was a kid now, he would be a fashion blogger. He went through all the same steps, but once he had that picture, he had nowhere to put it. Now the blogs have somewhere to put it -- it's no different. The human desire is the same. These are people who love fashion and want to be in that world, and before they had no reason to be invited to shows. Now they can pick up a camera, start a blog, and stop some of their fashion peers. They say, \"I've got a blog, can I take your picture?\" and now they get to interact with their heroes. I think the fashion stalwarts are missing the romance of that -- it's young kids, just like they were who want to be in that world, and now they've got a way to do it. Whether you look at their blogs or not is irrelevant. This is the next generation of fashion kids.\n\nGQ: How do you think these bloggers might change the fashion industry? There's already a sense of a paradigm shift being underway in terms of how content is being presented.\n\n Schuman: Tim Blank said in an interview, \"Blogs have created monsters.\" I think that's crazy. Everything creates monsters in some percentage. What I think is we're getting ready to see a generation of fashion writers like we've never seen, who are going to make the past fashion writers seem very quaint. When I was growing up, there was no Style.com. You could only see a few runway photos if magazines chose to run them, but there were no collection magazines. But now fashion writers have to write a review of a show that we're all seeing at the same time. So before, it was like doing a movie review of a movie that no one else would ever see. Of course you'd sound like a god.\n\nGQ: So you're saying there are cultural checks and balances now when it comes to covering fashion.\n\n Schuman: And now I'm used to that. If you look at people in this younger generation, they're not just sitting there writing; they've got their camera and are shooting and are using all these kinds of media. So just imagine a 20 year-old now who gets into a show and maybe gets a spot on the ground with a good angle, so they can write some notes, take good photos, maybe go backstage to do interviews, filming it all with their phones. And then they're 23, and they keep getting better and better and better. When they get their first jobs they're going to be so good because they'll be used to it all. Now, what newspaper is going to hire a fashion writer who can't say, \"I've got a blog. I know how to capture an audience.\" The big media is just going to be grabbing people who know how to do that.\n\nGQ: But even now, though, people are hired for the audiences they bring in as much as they are for their talent, which is really a game changer.\n\n Schuman: Yeah. I think we're going to see a generation of writers who we've never seen before. They're just going to be so multi-talented and they'll be able to have advertisers who want to support that specific vision. The hard part is going to be people who can't figure out how to make any of that money selling out and hawking these products.\n\nGQ: It's that idea of \"I'll give you 300 words for that sweater,\" which isn't actually contributing anything to the greater conversation.\n\n Schuman: Right, and everyone sees through that. One of the bad thing about this younger generation is that they maybe didn't think about how to make money through this without selling out overall. And some of the blogs you think, \"God, what are they doing?\" It's so over the top. But we will do things with other people where we make it very clear. The way we usually get around it is we'll put that content on their site. I may put up a picture saying, \"I did a project with Coach,\" and I'm proud of it, but it's there.\n\nGQ: I would imagine many guys starting come up and ask you for advice. What do you say to them? \n\n Schuman: Not many people talk to me. I wear glasses a lot, but when I'm shooting I don't. I don't see very well, so when I'm walking around I'm usually like this [squints] and people think I'm really pissed and they don't want to talk to me. And it's just that I don't have my glasses on.\n\nGQ: Got it. So for the record, Scott Schuman is not pissed off.\n\n Schuman: People don't ask me a lot, but I would just say that you've got to want it. You've got to think of some way to create your business where you can keep it clean. I make money a lot of different ways, and that diversity helps keep me going because if one thing drops out or if advertisers start creating more pressure, I can just bail since they're not touching anything content-wise. Figure out how to be fluid and make money in a lot of different ways. \n\nGQ: Very few brands build the kind of awareness as quickly as The Sartorialist has done since 2005. Seven years from now, do you have an idea of where you want your brand to be, or have you not even thought that far out?\n\n Schuman: All I think about is how to tell stories better. My heroes are people like Helen Levitt. There are people who have these big companies with a lot of different assistants. I want to just keep growing and how I hope it gets bigger and better is just telling better stories, telling more emotion. I'm hoping with these videos we can do that. I don't need clothes, I don't need people working under me to make me feel bigger, I don't need more vacation, I just want to get better."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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