The Sartorialist Has Some Obnoxious Points To Make

The world’s most successful (or at least most high-profile) street style blogger-photographer The Sartorialist AKA Scott Schuman was interviewed recently by The Talks. The interview, published yesterday, is prefaced with a photo (above by Mirkin) that provides an excellent indicator of what’s to come: joyless arrogance served up cold – just like a prop glass of Beaumes de Venise white wine.

Schuman’s blog is great. He obviously has a great eye for style and is a smart man. But this interview is high cringe: He speaks in dollar-terms about the money he makes from advertising on his site (which he offers up without even having been asked directly); he belittles the new kid on the block blogger, Tavi Gevinson, but then goes on to say he doesn’t read other fashion blogs… It’s all pretty bitchy and humourless.

Here are some of the most obnoxious comments he comes out with:
On teen blogger Tavi: “I think it’s great that Tavi can create a blog and write for other people that are like-minded – probably other kids around her age – but I don’t know how that is going to help a 26-year old, if she has never had a boyfriend or any of that kind of stuff.”

On whether he reads other fashion blogs: “No not really.”

On whether he’s afraid of competition in the street style blogosphere: “No because in order to do it with any longevity you actually have to make a business out of it and actually be able to make money. They might do it for a little while, but it’s hard to keep the passion to do it until you make money with it.” [Question: blogging about making money?]

On how he makes money from his site: “American Apparel bought advertising for the whole year and then I just got an email yesterday that Net-A-Porter.com is going to buy advertisements for the rest of the year (2010) as well. So those two ads alone are a good fraction of a million dollars: more than a quarter million and less than a half a million.”

On whether print magazines have lost integrity (through advertising): “Magazines are driven by fear: they have to keep these advertisers and do these things for them. But now blogs have grown so big that I get emails like that all the time. But we know, Garance and I, that the thing for us is the level of integrity so we just don’t do it.”

Well, we interviewed Scott a few years ago and he was a delight. Go figure.

Visit The Sartorialist at: www.thesartorialist.com

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