Meet the New Faces of Street Style From the Spring 2020 Shows
It wasn’t so long ago that street style photos were published without captions on Vogue.com and various blogs. In many cases, we didn’t need to identify the subjects—you knew who Anna Dello Russo and Cara Delevingne were. But if someone caught your eye who you didn’t recognize—maybe someone who wasn’t well-known, or who didn’t work in the industry—it was nearly impossible to figure out who they were.
Instagram changed that, of course. Now, if Phil Oh snaps a photo of an up-and-comer he’s never met, they tend to message him via Instagram DM. That’s good news for those of us who rely on Oh’s slideshows to introduce us to inspiring new people and ideas. For the Spring 2020 season, his coverage ranged from A-list celebs to low-key editors as always, but there were also a lot of new people we’d never seen, but wanted to know.
It goes without saying that most of these stylish subjects weren’t wearing head-to-toe runway looks; in fact, they were among the more experimental dressers we saw this month, and offered a glimpse of what street style might look like in the next decade. Among them, Georgia Pendlebury, an emerging stylist with a penchant for wild prints and pops of neon; Lolo Zouaï, a musician we saw at Coach 1941; the New York–based stylist Gia Seo, who has an entire Instagram account dedicated to “texture reports” in lieu of #OOTDs; and Maad, a singer and DJ that Oh spotted in the crowd at Pyer Moss.
As for “models off-duty,” the trope has lost its edge in recent years, but we were happily surprised by the fresh faces Oh photographed; they embody where fashion is headed in 2020: Sara Grace Wallerstedt, Nicole Atieno, Olivia Vinten, and Daniela Kocianova are a diverse group with their own unique looks. What strikes you about them isn’t just their beauty, but their ease and confidence. That’s mirrored in their highly personal and uncontrived styles, a far cry from the skinny jeans and leather jackets of years past.
A few of the other people we’re spotlighting aren’t exactly unknowns: Surely you’ve heard of Euphoria’s Hunter Schafer and American Horror Story’s Cody Fern. Maybe you already follow RuPaul’s Drag Race stars Miss Fame and Aquaria. They’re bound to be front-row fixtures in the seasons to come, and are representative of the industry’s shift toward inclusivity and LGBTQI+ positivity. If fashion eventually drops labels like “menswear” and “womenswear” and designers continue to embrace true diversity, we’ll have them to thank for pushing us in that direction.
If you revisit Oh’s full slideshows, you might notice that many photographs still aren’t ID’d. Even in the age of Instagram, it’s still difficult to track someone down based on one image, but comprehensiveness isn’t the goal. It wouldn’t be “real” street style without a little mystery; those photos, particularly the ones of unsuspecting bystanders, have a delightful sense of immediacy and discovery. We’re excited to see who Oh shoots next at the mens’ shows in January—they’ll be here before we know it! In the meantime, meet the new faces of Spring 2020, below.
