Summer dressing, NY style

NEW YORK—Twenty years ago, inspired by Bill Cunningham's work in the New York Times, I started doing a monthly HI Style street fashion photo feature in the Star-Bulletin.

That lasted all of three months. I got bored. Here, there just wasn't the variety of looks that abound on New York streets.

A new generation is a lot more fashion conscious now, but even so, there's still a universality to dressing here, which might be labeled "mall casual," with very little variation. As much as I started out wanting to document street fashion on this blog, the focus has been on social events, where people tend to make more of an effort to dress up.

You'd think summer casual is limiting to begin with, but there is so much more variety on New York streets. Their casual is a lot more studied and polished. Here's what I saw on Prince Street in a span of 15 minutes. It makes it a lot more fun to be a fashion voyeur: