What Does Your Neighborhood Say About Your Style?

Bed-Stuy-based photographer Shanthony Exum started her blog, The Every Body Project, to showcase the personal style of New Yorkers who don’t fit the usual fashion-blogger mold — read young, thin, white, and wealthy.

“I love fashion, but when I looked at most of the popular blogs, I didn’t see anyone who looked like me,” says Shanthony, a North Carolina-native who moved to New York City just last year. “I wanted to show that all types of women could be beautiful, no matter how old they are or what size pants they wear.”

Armed with her Nikon D3200, Exum hits the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn each week, taking photos, and asking the men and women she snaps to share one thing they love about themselves. Along the way, she's captured a side of the city’s aesthetic that has gone underground in the age of street-style celebrities — one that is bold, gritty, and uniquely New York.

Ahead, Exum dishes on the DNA of NYC’s style-spotting locales: From the perfectly polished women of the Upper West Side, to the art-school kids of NYU, to the corner in Chelsea she's nicknamed the “money corner” of New York street fashion.