Site set on street style

Lookbook.nu showcases fashion from everyday people,
giving them a chance to share glam points with the world.

Is this going to be the new route to Planet Fashion? A website showing "real" young people from around the world modelling their own stylish look has had 1.75 million visitors in the past month. Designers, model scouts and stylists are keeping tabs on it too.

Put down your glossy fashion mag and stop idolising supermodels. If you think they are your fashion saints, you are sadly out of touch.

A new tribe is taking over the fashion world and instead of middle-aged fashion editors, it's a superstylish international bunch of mostly teenagers (60,000 of them, in fact), who are showing us how to dress. Displaying their immaculately styled and photographed fashion "looks" online for the world to see, they might soon be pushing Agyness Deyn out of the way and off the edge of the catwalk.

Welcome to Lookbook.nu, a virtual fashion gallery for young people all around the globe. Just like The Sartorialist (pioneer of street fashion blogs who began photographing stylish people on the street in 2005) and the many "What are you wearing today?" internet forums, Lookbook.nu is taking the power away from big fashion houses and magazines and giving it to "real" people on the street.

Lookbook.nu was launched in April last year by a 24-year-old Californian Yuri Lee and her friend Jason Su. Neither has any background in fashion but saw the emerging trend for people looking at fashion, talking about fashion and even making their first steps towards a career in fashion by getting online. They decided, as Lee says, "to organise it and take it global".

Now users from Iceland to Australia via China, Latvia and, of course, London are uploading their "looks" online. Once the pictures are up, the community can then rate (or "hype") them. Looks that are well "hyped" are listed at the top of the Hot section and users who are consistently "hyped" gain "karma", which gets them more exposure on the site's front pages.

With 1.75 million unique visitors in the past month, 150,000 of those from the UK, Lookbook.nu is fast gaining ground on the fashion industry's leading publications (UK Vogue's average monthly circulation is 221,090) and some of the images uploaded are so slick that the fashion professionals are starting to notice.

Big brands such as American Apparel and Topman are in talks with Lookbook.nu about collaborations. "There have been modelling agents who have used the site to scout and I've seen small shops and retailers use our members as models for their photo shoots," Lee says.

In the UK, Elite Model Management has noticed the site and is impressed. Managing director Michelangelo Chiacchio says: "We'll definitely put this site on our ‘ones to watch' radar. It looks like a good source for both potential new faces and new stylists and other creatives who we may want to work with."

Not surprising, then, that fashion hopefuls are desperate to join the site, which is free and by invitation only (requiring existing users to invite new recruits) or that existing Lookbook.nu users are all vying for "hype".

"It is quite competitive," says 19-year-old Londoner Peter Henderson, who initially joined Lookbook.nu to promote his own fashion blog, Hapsical.blogspot.com. "Looks rarely attract negative commentary but it is telling when they don't get much hype on the site."

He's right. Contenders for the Hot page may be secretly disappointed when their looks don't make the grade but you wouldn't know it from the admiring comments the top-rated pictures reel in. Lisa M. from Zurich, for example (a 23-year-old design student and model who uploads some of the glossiest images on the site), will by now have become accustomed to being told "you're beautiful!", "gorgeous" and "amazing!" but is unlikely to have received anything more constructive than that. Negative comments are actually forbidden and will be deleted if they are left on a web page. So is adulation the only point?

"The attraction," Henderson says, "is the ability to see what other like-minded ‘real' people are wearing, to be able to share with the world what you're wearing and see how people react to it. The present internet generation is, in many ways, all about sharing — be it images on Flickr, videos on YouTube, thoughts on Twitter or outfit pictures on Lookbook.nu."

For Patricia Stepanovic, a 20-year-old Slovenian studying at the London College of Fashion, it is the ideal starting point for anyone with an interest in fashion or a desire to work in the industry.

"In the fashion world, you have to put yourself out there and that does mean being prepared to post pictures of yourself and your style," she says. "It's one of the most basic ways to get into fashion."

Lee, however, thinks not only is it a route in for fashion newbies but that it's turning the fashion world into "a two-way street". "Whether you're a would-be designer or just a teenager who loves fashion, Lookbook.nu provides a way to be seen and promotes your vision. By the same token, you can be sure the design people at brands such as Urban Outfitters, H&M and Zara have caught wind of street-style sites and already take note of the latest trends online. "A glance at the trends on Lookbook.nu indicates that if she's right, we can expect to be aspiring to the figure of a 17-year-old for the foreseeable future."