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Face Hunter hits the streets for fashion

PARIS: Is fashion what you see on the runways? Or is it the woman in a quilted bodice smoking on a rooftop or wearing fluorescent stockings that clash against the graffitied walls?

For almost two years, Yvan Rodic, 30, a man with a camera out and about in London and beyond, has captured such street-side trendies in his blog, Face Hunter (www.facehunter.blogspot.com).

"People's expectations fashion-wise have become so moody and change so quickly that only street reporting is complex and diversified enough to respond," Rodic said. "It means that magazines with their biannual trend reviews look almost like prehistory."

Alex Hocking of Worth Global Style Network, a London-based trend agency for the fashion and design industries, says blogs like Face Hunter and The Satorialist are effective because "they tap into our personal desire to want to share, communicate and connect with the wider, even global, online community of people like us."

And what effect does this have on fashion? "The result is that people are becoming their own style curator, picking up ideas everywhere rather than just following the trend seen in a magazine," Rodic said.

As for Face Hunter itself, "everything started by coincidence," Rodic said. "I got a camera as a gift for Christmas 2005 and I instinctively started to photograph eye-catching people around me." After a month, he decided to share the photos, "in case someone could be interested by what's going on in Paris," and Face Hunter was created.

Rodic did not start the blog for professional purposes, but it has turned into a full-time endeavor. He now contributes to five or six magazines on a monthly basis, "face hunts" for portraits for several companies and, in the next few days, is going to start accepting advertising on his site.

The blog also has changed as now Rodic travels a lot. "It has become a worldwide game to discover fresh ideas, in a music festival in Reykjavik or a fashion week in São Paulo," he said. "It's absolutely delightful; it's why I do it."

Rodic roams the streets, often taking several photos of the same person to get the best shot, and uses about 90 percent of the images he takes - usually posting about 10 photos a day.

"I focus on what I like and what I believe," he said. "I always look for something unique."

He says only the fusion between a person and his outfit can create style, and that is what he pursues for the blog - characters who embrace individuality; people, and therefore their clothes, who are intriguing and realistic. "Fashion is a costume, style is an identity," he said.

On the blog, which Rodic says gets 10,000 visitors a day, the photos link to discussion forums, where devotees share advice about where to buy vintage fur coats or confirm that the bag the "dashing blonde in #3" is holding is, indeed, a Marc Jacobs.

He admits the comments influence him: "After three weeks in New York, people want a change. They're telling me, 'Go back to London' - so I do."

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