Street-style stars, those fashion-forward folks papped outside shows, have arguably become as trend-setting as any model or celebrity. At one of this season’s most hyped shows, JW Anderson in London, for example, over 50 photographers swarmed outside the entrance looking for their photographic prey, making it hard for the more unremarkably dressed among us to reach the door. In the last five years, the scene has grown exponentially. The shot outside the show is now as influential – and valuable – as the one of the model on the catwalk.

But attending the shows in a photograph-worthy outfit does not a street-style star make. For that you need the black-clad photographers – now a familiar presence outside shows, snapping editors, influencers and insiders – willing to take the pictures that then get picked up off their Instagram feeds and used by the street-style stars themselves, often then becoming fodder for a slew of other fashionable feeds. But these images are often used without the photographers’ permission, and without a fee.

However, many of the photographers are freelance, with some taking pictures for no money at all. Katz Sindig is one such photographer. He says he spends anything between $8,000 and $15,000 in expenses in an average fashion month, travelling between New York, London, Milan and Paris. Both Sindig and Valentina Frugiuele, another photographer involved in #NoFreePhotos, declined to say how much they earn for a photograph. (Frugiulele did say: “I don’t even want to think about it.”) While each image could be sold for a relatively low fee, if that image is syndicated to different outlets over a season, it can, quite literally, be a money shot.

View more: bruidsjurken