The Case of Trinidad Lookbook + Lookbook.nu

One of these things looks just like the other...
TrinidadLookbook.com and the original, Lookbook.nu

Seems like someone might have taken me up on my challenge - fantastic!

I've been eagerly waiting to see what sort of street fashion pics would be featured on a Caribbean style-spotting blog, but now that I've found such a site, I must say I'm quite ambivalent on the entire thing.

On the one hand, it's about time someone began showcasing the personal style and fashion choices of the extremely creative people within the diaspora. Major, major kudos for that.

Case in point: Trinidad Lookbook. The relatively new site culls together images of well-dressed party folk, collected from other, popular entertainment websites.

But on the other hand, it's one thing to use another site's watermarked, credited images within your posts - I do it all the time, as do other bloggers - but it's something else to directly pinch a popular site's name, and brand.

Maybe the blogger behind Trinidad Lookbook didn't know that the original Lookbook.nu even existed, but seeing that the latter is a highly publicized, personal-style trove, I doubt it very much. By extension, the former missed the entire point of street-style hunting.

The idea is become a fashion voyeur: to showcase your own shots and selections of outfits as worn by everyday people. Street-style is the antithesis of highly edited, gussied-up editorial fashion, and it champions the creativity of ordinary people in ordinary situations.

It means actually keeping your own eye open for stylish folk on the streets, in the grocery, in the rain, at the beach, wherever you are on a day to day basis, and documenting your photo findings on your blog. Which would then showcase your personal style aesthetic, and not the random, posed party shots from Trinipulse and LizzardBlizzard.

To TrinidadLookbook: You're on the right track, but I suggest investing in a decent camera, doing your own legwork, and maybe rebranding your site so that it's truly original. I hope you keep at it; I'd love to see more!

LMN Harris

NB. Image courtesy TrinidadLookbook/Lookbook.nu