A camera, a good eye and an internet connection. According to the Les Garcons de Glasgow, that’s all they needed to start a street style blog. But to build up your blog to such an extent that it has nearly three thousand facebook followers, its own range of T-shirts, and invitations to the top fashion events in the country, there must be more to it. Luckily, the lovely Garcon Jonathan was kind enough to answer a few of my questions.

What inspired you to start your own blog?

While I was living in New York, my best Friend Daniel told me about a Sartorialist exhibition and around that time we started speaking regularly about the interesting people we’d met in our differing cities. When I graduated from University, I set up a social media marketing agency and I thought a street style blog would be a great supplement to the work I was doing with some of my fashion clients. Daniel had taken a few street style photographs already so we decided to use them on Les Garcons as well and it really took off quite quickly after that – within a few months we were getting around 600 hits a day and it grew and grew the more projects that happened around the city and internationally.

How did you build up your fanbase? (2695 fans on FB – that’s a hell of a lot for a street style blog)

I think when Les Garcons de Glasgow started there was a real space for a street style blog in the city. We post a lot of information through Facebook which is interesting to Scottish people, not just fashion. As well as that, I think the content is important, we try to put up things which we would want to see and find interesting – people respond to that because I guess they like similar things.

Glasgow isn’t exactly a city known for its style – How easy is it to find fashion on the streets of Glasgow?

If there’s one cultural element that Glasgow is known for, I think it would be music, and fashion and music go hand in hand. The people of Glasgow have quite a liberal sense of fashion, similar to that of Berlin. It’s quite inexpensive to live in so there are a lot of artists, designers and musicians living here, but it’s traditionally very working class. This brings a really nice eclectic mix of artistic flair and excitement over dressing up. If you go out to any club or even the shopping districts at the weekend, there are masses of people dressed up to the nines, showing off their finest.

Why do you think street style blogs have become so popular?

We’ve become so desensitised in life by traditional media playing god – dictating trends and altering people beyond recognition with photoshop. With street style blogs, you can see real clothes on real people and also get an insight into the city it represents, beyond what any tourist book could ever give. Whenever I travel, I always check out the local street style blogs first.

So which other blogs do you follow?

I do love a good fashion blog. I’m a big fan of magazines – I’ve been collecting i-D and POP for about 5 years now, so blogs are a great way to give my abused bookshelves a rest. I’m really into The Selby at the moment – I think it’s a wonderful insight into people’s lives beyond their clothing. I used to really be into Kate Loves Me, but as Pelayo’s been so busy lately, he’s not been updating it as much as he used to. I think Backyard Bill is done supremely well – what I love about street style is real people, wearing real clothes and portraying their unique personality – this is captured perfectly by Bill Gentle.

What kind of opportunities has Les Garcons created for you?

It has been a really great experience over all, especially as I didn’t have any expectations for what it will bring. Some of the highlights include a big exhibition in Urban Outfitters featuring the ‘best’ photographs from the blog. I love that an American company is willing to participate with the community it is located in – there are so many big retailers who acknowledge customers as  being culturally different.

Along with this I’ve been invited to Berlin, one of my favourite cities, where I participated with a few independent designers and fashion publications. This season I’m also photographing some shows at London and Paris Fashion Weeks – I’ll be documenting most of the Scottish designers showing in London – Louise Gray (one of my personal favourites), Holly Fulton, Pam Hogg and a few others. I can’t wait to snap the street style of Paris – one of my favourite blogs is Jak & Jil so I have high expectations after seeing Tommy’s work from Paris!

You’ve recently launched your own T-shirt series – Why did you decide to do this?

I’ve been playing about with design for a few years. I love working with different mediums (photography, painting, designing, illustration) and so it started as a fun project to coincide with the blog. The first designs were created as a limited edition project – hand printed in Glasgow – using photography from the blog and graphically designed by myself. I am personally a big fan of simple white T-shirts – it’s the kind of thing that will never age and can be worn in so many ways. Think of James Dean in a white tee and Levis and then Kate Moss in a white tee and white tailored suit. Completely different looks but both can be worn with the same shirt. I love the idea of that – simplicity.

Similarly to the blog, the T-shirts kind of grew arms and legs on its own as I had a lot of people ordering shirts internationally. I’m surprised and obviously really pleased with the number of people of have an interest in what we’re doing – from Japan and Singapore, to Mexico and Denmark, we’ve had orders from all over.

You’ve already achieved a lot, but where else do you see the Blog going? And where will it take you?

A lot of people ask me that but I have no real game plan. We’ve got another exhibition coming up at the end of the month which will be touring Scotland and a selection of my photos are about to open in Montpellier, southern France for an exhibition as part of Scotland Week down there. On the 25th of the month I’m collaborating in a fashion event called ‘Bold Souls’: it’s a re-style party, with a number of Scottish designers selling items from their collection, hair and make up professionals on hand to work on customers and even a design team there to re-work any vintage clothing that needs freshening up.

And finally, any advice for aspiring bloggers?

Create content you’d want to read yourself. Post consistently and collaborate with like minded people!

Les  Garcons T-Shirts Series: