Kate Lanphear on Being a Street Style Subject: "It's Like Hearing Your Own Voice on an Answering Machine"

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

The Business of Fashion did an interview with Elle's Senior Style Director and street-style subject extraordinaire Kate Lanphear, and in it, she talks about everything from her time spent hustling pool in London, what it's like living in a hostel with seven guys, and more glamorous things, like dressing awesome and what her post is like at Elle.

On being a constant street-style-blog fixture, Lanphear says, "The street-style thing is hard for me to talk about, because it makes me pretty wildly embarrassed. I get really, really shy. It's like hearing your own voice on an answering machine."

Lanphear also explains just how she spent her time in London, before she moved to Sydney to work at both Australian Vogue and Australian Harper's Bazaar:

I ended up living in a hostel, sharing a room with seven guys in bunk beds. I was the only girl in the room. I would clean the disgusting hostel through the night. My roommates taught me how to hustle pool. You would drink beer for free and buy a loaf of bread and peanut butter and eat that for a whole week...I would go to work for a magazine during the day and then work through the night so they would let me live in the hostel.

So there you have it, aspiring fashion magazine workers—you can do it one of two ways. Either move to Paris, learn French, and start a brand new blog à la the advice of Cathy Horyn, or do it the Kate Lanphear way, which includes drinking beer with pool hall dudes in London.
· The Creative Class | Kate Lanphear [Business of Fashion]
· Here's a $23 Fanzine All About Kate Lanphear [Racked]
· All Kate Lanphear Coverage [Racked]