Street Peeper's Phil Oh Gives Us An Inside Look at New York Fashion Week

By Bee-Shyuan Chang
September 7, 2011

Phil Oh

A street style photograph by Phil Oh

Though we love editorial spreads as much as the next style acolyte, these days, we find ourselves gravitating towards street style blogs for real-life fashion inspiration. Among our most visited sites: Street Peeper. Notable for documenting savvy editors and striking passerby in cities worldwide, the site was founded by the energetic Phil Oh. A relative street style fashion veteran (after all, the genre has only been a mainstay in the blogosphere for a few years now), the Chicago native now contributes to Vogue.com among other stylish outlets.

With Fashion Week kicking off tomorrow, Oh gives us a ground-up look at how he's prepared, fills us in where street style fashion trends are going for fall and tells us why it's good to have an "arm party."

The Inside Source: Fashion Week is here! How do you prep yourself for the big week?

Phil Oh: It starts about a month out (with a noticeable increase in fashion-related nightmares), proceeds to anxiety and lots of hand-wringing, and then I say a farewell to my family and friends, for the next month of my life is sucked into the black hole of the international Fashion Week calendar. I also do a week or so of those Trader Joe's colon cleanse pills!

left: Phil Oh

The Inside Source: When did you start hitting up the fashion week circuit as a street style photographer?

Phil Oh: I think it was 2006 or 2007? Longer than a little bit, but definitely pre-dated by Bill Cunningham, Scott Schuman and a couple others.

The Inside Source: What was it like in the beginning? Would editors stop and let their pictures be taken or did you have to chase them down a bit?

Phil Oh: Almost everyone would stop for a smile and a photo. It was pretty easy then, since there were only a few other photographers around. We had time to build a rapport with the editors and stylists, and it was actually kinda fun. There were a few who were cagey about it, but have since come around.

Zanna Rassi

Fashion Editor Zanna Rassi (photo by Phil Oh)

The Inside Source: The street style game has come a long way since then. Now when you go to fashion shows, there's a big crush of street style photographers outside, and there are street style "celebrities."

Phil Oh: Oh boy. Yeah, it's totally overwhelming—the number of photographers outside shows now. Every season there's a new batch of kids with point and shoots, bewildered professional photographers who had no idea what they were getting themselves into, creepy modelizers and God knows who else. It wouldn't be so bad if everyone retained some semblance of order, or etiquette, or better yet just stayed out of my way (ha!), but alas...

I mean, I can't begrudge someone for picking up a camera and showing up at the fashion shows. That's what I did. But it's gotten to the point where you can actually see the frightened faces of seasoned editors as a battalion of bloggers swarm their way, or the deer-in-headlights look from the new faces. Who knows even where all these photos go?

The idea of a street style "celebrity" fashion is pretty funny but I guess one consequence of appearing on all the street-style blogs is that it can definitely raise someone's profile.

Taylor Tomasi Hill; Yasmin Sewell

Marie Claire editor Taylor Tomasi Hill, fashion consultant Yasmin Sewell (photos by Phil Oh)

The Inside Source: What kind of style attracts your eye? What are you looking for in a photograph?

Phil Oh: It's hard to really put into words. I just take pictures of things I like, but I'm definitely drawn more to color and prints, different textures, but also people who just have their own personal style and identity. Of course I like to shoot women wearing the newest season Prada or Celine, but I love it more when I find someone who looks awesome without that season's 'it' items.

The Inside Source: Who are some of your favorite street style subjects?

Phil Oh: [Blogger] Susie Bubble because she's one of the few people that throws together impossibly kooky color/print/texture combinations, and still manages to (almost) always make it work. It's admirable.

[Stylist] Marina Munoz just always looks so, I dunno, cool? Effortlessly casual chic? I hate those words, but they do actually apply in this case.

[Editor at Large, Vogue Japan] Anna Dello Russo, for obvious reasons.

[Stylist and editor] Anya Ziourova. Her fashion style is fantastic, but I also love how her hair is always slightly messy and that she wears minimal makeup, if any.

Susie Bubble

Blogger Susie Bubble (photo by Phil Oh)

Anna Dello Russo

Stylist and Editor Anna Dello Russo

The Inside Source: Being on the ground, so to speak, have you spotted any emerging fashion trends lately?

Phil Oh: I think people are becoming more open to experimenting with color and mixing prints. It's great!

The Inside Source: How about fashion accessories?

Phil Oh: Arm parties: in the form of stacks upon stacks of matching (or totally mismatched, which is even better) bracelets. Also, fun, quirky, whimsical shoes and hats.

The Inside Source: What colors do you predict for fall?

Phil Oh: I've been advised to say, "jewel tones," but I'm not sure what that even means. It sounds expensive though.

The Inside Source: How do you keep your energy up? Fashion Week is always such a madly hectic schedule.

Phil Oh: I pretend that the B-complex vitamin I'm taking is Adderall, in the hopes of some sort of placebo effect. Alas, it never works and I actually end up looking like an extra from Dawn of the Dead. It's doubly hard too because the schedules are so packed. There's hardly any time for a decent meal and forget a leisurely dinner. I have to go straight home to edit and file photos. At the end of the month, my bag is stuffed full of receipts from McDonald's, Pret-a-Manger, Paul and those disgusting steam-tray Chinese takeouts in Paris.

The Inside Source: How are you going to celebrate after New York Fashion Week is over?

Phil Oh: Celebrate with a glass of cheap champagne on the red-eye to London for London Fashion Week? Then Milan, then Paris. It's a whole month of street-style fun. But after Paris, I usually fly home to my parents' house in Chicago to sleep, eat Korean food and drop off all my stuff at my aunt's laundromat for some free dry-cleaning.

The Inside Source: Last (and very important!) question: Do you shop eBay?

Phil Oh: I've been an eBay member since 1998 when I started selling beanie babies out of my NYU dorm room, haha! My last eBay purchase was a CD-single of a Scottish band called Looper; the B-side had a remix by Pulp that I really wanted. Before that, a replacement battery for my Macbook. And I always make quick scans for my favorite designers—Junya Watanabe, Dries van Noten and Prada—and sometimes I manage to find great bargains.

(Images courtesy of Phil Oh)