Every London Fashion Week is a reunion for a London street style photographer like me with my photographer peers I cherish and the stylish attendees who’ve grown familiar and friendly as the seasons go on.
London Fashion Week street style between the SS27 shows, the candid Pinterest chose as a cover for its Spotted by Pinterest editorial.
Whether approaching strangers for street portraits or taking candids like my London street photography, the sense of community – and your place within it – changes the quality of images you create.
This goes beyond street style photography and is part of street photography as a whole: images change when you go from the outside looking in to being a part of the experience.
Sophia Hadjipanteli (@sophiahadjipanteli) in pin badges and studs, a street portrait where the jacket tells half the story.
I felt this the most when shooting street photography during London’s solar eclipse: the city came together, and it’s an experience anyone from all walks of life can share the same awe in.
When documenting Carnival’s J’Ouvert paint-throwing parade only a few weeks prior, getting yourself covered in paint – versus watching from the sidelines – puts you into the shoes of the subjects you’re photographing.
As it applies to fashion photography, it’s a warm community with a shared commonality of a love for self-expression. It’s what gets everyone into it. The same goes for street style photographers too, who share a love for finding their unique voice in a shared environment – as well as rampant neurodivergence, which I feel most street style (and street) photographers would agree with: it embraces pursuing the “shiny thing” that goes by.
Street style details at London Fashion Week: snakeskin trousers that matched the bike.
Red was the colour of the season, right down to the tights.
The Missing Addresses
While it is warm, it is gatekept, made to feel exclusive and unobtainable: the sense of “cool” that sometimes feels manufactured, while nonetheless sought after.
As time goes on, some aspects and experiences within Fashion Week become more accessible. Others become further out of reach to the majority.
This was the first season since I’ve been a photographer in London where no addresses were published on the schedule. On the other hand, having just shot Copenhagen Fashion Week for Pinterest, I saw that Copenhagen publishes the schedule for all to see.
Two sides of the same coin. One may argue publicized locations lead to requiring more security. Protests are common in London, too: H&M’s show was hit by PETA this season, as was COS’s at New York Fashion Week.
However, other cities thrive by making it a part of their identity – not hoarded for the recurring guests and familiar few.
From my own experience photographing this season of the “Spotted by Pinterest” editorial series, having shot AW26 London Fashion Week for Pinterest earlier in the year and being Pinterest’s first to shoot Berlin Fashion Week street style, this season felt different – in a very positive, if guarded, way.
I became a street style photographer for Pinterest after they found my first LFW SS25 men’s street style and SS25 women’s street style blog posts. My portfolio has come a long way since then, but I just showed up with a camera not knowing anyone – just following the only address they gave. And this led to where I am today, with street style photography as a foundation of my experience in London as a lifestyle photographer.
Now, that opportunity may have evaporated for others who were in my shoes.
Though the main NEWGEN (New Generation) space for emerging designers remained the same, the address is no longer shared. For someone like me who was on the fence about even going – let alone building the courage to overcome the awkwardness of street photography – that makes all the difference.
The Veterans
With the stage set for the manufactured exclusivity and fast-forwarding to this season, spring summer 2027 (SS27), many of the street style photographer “veterans”, those who’ve been at every Fashion Week in every city, every season, for years or decades, have returned the smiles and well wishes.
Being an extroverted person, I seek to meaningfully engage with others and make them feel welcome – especially stemming from feeling on the fringe of friend groups in high school and not wanting others to feel excluded.
The Fashion Week community has sometimes felt like it’s had a “you can’t sit with us” mentality among those who’ve been there the longest.
Maybe it’s because they’ve seen many photographers come and go. For most of them, street style photography is their identity, being the only kind of work they produce. Maybe there’s a sense of job insecurity or feeling threatened, as gossip makes its way around about who stole which person’s street style job, and it sometimes feels like there’s a scarcity mentality that there isn’t enough paying work for everyone who wants to photograph it.
Shooting Copenhagen poses more barriers to entry than shooting street style in your own city. It’s more niche than Paris Fashion Week for those looking to self-fund the trip with the hopes of photographing overflowing guest lists of world-renowned talent.
Those who travelled to shoot street style in Copenhagen were either the ones most committed or had found a commissioned place in the street style photography industry.
For me, that’s Pinterest – and a very outwardly visual identity with the QR code badge I wear and the release form clipboard we chase subjects down with (unique to us at Pinterest as a commercial organization, albeit largely beloved by the public, versus a magazine who can post anything for editorial usage).
Pinterest has been my favourite client since I moved here – a Vancouver photographer now living in London.
In Copenhagen, the veterans acknowledged me. Some who quite literally turned their chins up to me and my peers only a handful of months earlier have now said “it’s really great to see you!” and gone in for a hug.
It feels good to be welcomed and recognized, but I can’t help the high school feeling. This isn’t to put down what others may think of “earning the respect”, and it takes time for a very mild acquaintance to become a friendship.
That newfound recognition made its way into London Fashion Week this season, something my longtime Pinterest partner and style expert Leanne noticed too.
She brought up “something feels different this time”, and after I shared the reflections I’ve given here, she said it all made sense and she couldn’t agree more.
It came as an awareness and a surprise, and one I’ve since learned others shared: after banding together and shooting the last couple of years, my group of friends is now seen as an established group.
This blog post summing up the spring summer men’s and women’s street style has shapeshifted into a diary (albeit briefly, I promise), but after sharing these street style roundups on my blog, there are only so many ways you can write about trend patterns and colours.
As someone who shares my point of view for a living (though visually), I felt these observations of this really niche photography genre – which gets seen by the masses, but continues to be made out of reach to most – go beyond what a magazine would tell you, or an AI-written blog post would spit out.
This is me! And having a wider identity as a street and lifestyle photographer as a whole helps keep me humble: most of the candid street photography I shoot is garbage, but the once-a-year type candid moments keep me coming back. It enables you to see things as they are and document them, versus becoming the part of the fashion world that makes it feel elitist – and like high school.
This is why I love partnering with Pinterest – it’s not the “we wear pink on Wednesdays” prescriptive approach to fashion. We’re not sent out to capture haute couture or the luxury unobtainability.
It’s about capturing creativity and ingenuity; working with what you have, finding vintage, repurposed, or reimagined.
We ask if this will inspire someone else, and we photograph it to share it with the world.
The SS27 Trends
We document those who create their own style and make conscious choices to put their own spin on things, rather than mirror others.
This season, here’s what the trendsetters were wearing – those who break the industry mould and use their own style to inspire others: creating community that you can be a part of, too.
Purple and red: the standout, worn together and on their own, and surprising to see so soon after teal led the way in Copenhagen only a month before
Glamoratti: funnel neck jackets, 80s vibes and oversized aviator sunglasses
Colourful plaid
Bird and feather details: even feathers in red
Bows: though I didn’t see many in hair
Mary Janes: the ballet flat-style shoe
Big collars on shirts: one we spotted beyond the brief
Through this post I’ve shared my favourite street style portraits from London Fashion Week SS27, and you can see Pinterest’s own picks on its Street style trends from London Fashion Week board.
If you’re on the fence about shooting London Fashion Week next season, like I was at SS25, start with my guide to approaching strangers for street portraits. And if you spot the Pinterest badge and clipboard, come say hello.
