Scene @ New York‘s Look Book Party

It may have been a book party, but I was still somewhat out of my element at Bergdorf Goodman’s last night, where New York magazine was celebrating the publication of Look Book, a compendium of its popular weekly street fashion spotlight. Luckily, I spotted fellow bloggers from Portfolio and Jezebel, as well as a former Gawker editor, so I wasn’t completely at sea.) And the table where Amy Larocca and Jake Chessum were signing copies was packed, so I was glad I’d had a chance to swing by the magazine’s dowtown offices Wednesday afternoon to chat with her. “We take so many pictures than we can ever use in the magazine,” Larocca said of the book’s origins. “It was breaking our hearts that a lot of them weren’t seeing the light of day… We already have six more months of photos since the book went to press last March.”

When people find out she’s the writer behind Look Book, Larocca said, everybody wants to know how they can arrange to be in the next shoot; even her mother had a stranger pitch her daughter as a photo candidate. “And once we put John Waters in,” she continued, “nobody believed we didn’t set these up in advance. But we felt very strongly that this is about seeing people as they go about New York City, rather than pimped up for the camera.” So the formula remains the same: Once a month or so, she and Chessum and crew set up somewhere in the city and invite whoever catches their eye to be a subject. “There are so many photo shoots in New York City that people don’t really notice,” she explained when I ask if the giant white screen doesn’t make Look Book‘s arrival obvious. Did she have any favorites from the collection? “I could tell you a reason I love every one of these,” she smiled.

Back at the party, I compared notes with my fellow bloggers for a while and snapped photos of various people I either recognized from the book or was pretty sure were in there somewhere. On my way out, as we rode down in the elevator, one older gentleman grumbled, “I guess they all have to be back in the asylum by midnight, huh?” “Be nice!” his female companion hissed, but he kept up his protests all the way to the front door.

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