GREATEST: Julien Boudet

Since I started—my first New York Fashion Week experience was in 2012 and I launched Bleu Mode in January 2013—the street style scene has changed a lot. To be completely honest, it’s definitely become less exciting to me. Nowadays there are way too many photographers in front of shows and street style has turned into this marketing-slash-product placement-slash-sponsored outfit thing where only a few outfits are actually authentic, thus not so interesting to capture. It’s become such a big business and I feel like it keeps going that way. It’s only becoming worse since there are more and more photographers that will take their chances in the street style game. I am not blaming anyone; everyone is free to get started like I did seven years ago. I’m just describing the scene. 

Well, I went from not really knowing what I was doing and shooting a bit of everything I’d see at fashion weeks, to having my own vision and aesthetic. Now when I shoot street style—I still do it a bit—I take very few images compared to before. Even after studying photography at Parsons in NYC for two years I had to practice a lot in order to find my own vision. I like this quote from Henri Cartier-Bresson: “Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst,” meaning you most likely won’t be producing great work during your very first years of shooting, which is why I thought street style would be a great way to develop my photographic style since you take a lot of images a day. It is definitely a great practice if you are willing to work hard and not sleep much.

Nowadays, before I take a photo I think way more and I can see the picture in my head before I even grab my camera. Things are more automatic. It’s way easier and obviously I am still learning day after day. Also, I’ve been doing more editorial work and personal projects the past three or four years, pushing myself a lot in order to keep evolving; I get bored pretty fast in general, so I have to maintain that excitement by trying new things constantly.

What’s inspiring is to see how far I can go while doing what I love doing; I want to see how much I can push my own boundaries, experiment, collaborate…Curiosity is what drives me. I am constantly thinking about projects, work—it’s more than a passion, it’s a lifestyle. 

I challenge myself in accepting projects that are new to me and collaborating with creative people who have a totally different background from me.

A good example of that is that I am currently working on an art project in collaboration with this young French artist around the Nike TN. It’s super exciting to discover a new way of approaching things with someone who has his own workflow and vision, particularly playing with a product that I’ve known very well for 20 years.

There used to be a pretty clear difference of styles between the four cities, but now it’s all a bit blurry because of the rise of streetwear and hype brands. The fact that these products are available everywhere plus the popularity of Instagram has a lot of influence and makes people dress the same way all over the world. You see people wearing the same collab sneakers with the zip tie, paired with the same designer denim pants and a skate tee everywhere—in Shanghai, NYC or Paris.

That being said, to me the most interesting city in terms of style remains New York because people here don’t care about judgement. Paris is still chic and trendy; London is a bit edgy and underground; Milan still has that sartorial-slash-old school Italian traditional style.  

To be honest, I like clothes that define me and that mean something to me, and that’s the main reason why I love vintage—I don’t pay attention to hype at all. I did not wait for Nike to bring back the Shox or the TN to wear them because they are models that mean a lot to me.

It reminds me of the time when I was growing up in my hometown in Southern France and all that nostalgia from this unbelievable era that was the ‘90s. I was obsessed with those colorful Lacoste tracksuits back then and the first time I saw the TNs in 1999, I was in shock! It was the most beautiful sneaker I had ever seen and the fact that they were hard to get (there was no Internet back then) made them even more appealing to me. I’ll never forget that day when I got my first pair. It was like getting a brand new Mercedes.

I like to wear things that represent things I like the most: Michael Jordan merch (he’s been my biggest inspiration since I was a teenager), Shox and TN merch, Dragon Ball-Z merch (in France we all grew up with this and we’re all crazy about it, even now), Dennis Rodman tees, vintage Lacoste… Apart from that, I’m really into Dries Van Noten, Raf Simons, Prada… I like mixing both luxury items and vintage. The Prada Linea Rossa collection defines my style perfectly: sportswear meets luxury. 

I am not into hype, so I don’t care much about limited edition sneakers and collabs, unless it’s a classic model that I really like. I like a very specific type of sneaker and I keep looking for them online. My favorites are the TN, so I search for the rarest and coolest vintage models available online. 

I just think the design is pretty incredible, when they came out it was a revolution. It’s such a specific and strong design, very aggressive. Just the name itself is great.  When they came out very few people had them because they were super expensive (1000 francs at the time, 150 euros now). I actually never got them because of that, but now that I can afford them I’ve started collecting them.