You have probably seen The Sartorialist, a highly regarded fashion blog that consists of beautiful photographs of people on the streets of New York and occasionally other international cities.

Once you admire the fascinating portraits and interesting fashion choices of the Sartorialist’s subjects, you can click around an ever-growing list of street-style sites from metropolitan areas around the world. Some have barely a word to say about their photo subjects, others offer tantalizing little bits of information, and then there are those that talk at length about what and who they’ve photographed.

There’s Face Hunter (mostly London, but also scenes from other cities) and The Style Scout (also mostly in London). Garance Doré is tres, tres trendy right now — a witty mix of Paris street fashion, sketches and bits of entertaining writing by the author.

Style-Arena from Tokyo is a mish-mash of all kinds of things, but this page of street styles is further proof that Tokyo residents may be the coolest in all the world. The Streetswalker from Tel Aviv offers translation in the “comments” window and Stil In Berlin provides the designers’ names as well as the photos’ subjects.

Here are more: Style/Clicker from Munich mostly, Copenhagen Street Style, Toronto Street Fashion, On The Corner from Buenos Aires, Hel Looks from Helsinki, Reykjavik Looks, Look at Me from Moscow (no translations, none required) and The MidWasteland, pictures of Chicago streetwear.

These sites serve as friendly reminders that fashion for men and women all over the globe - and especially in urban areas — is fascinating, edgy, colorful, creative, elegant and sometimes oddly beautiful. There is a consistent theme of risk-taking and statement-making style, from Japan to Moscow to Chicago. They make us want to mix up patterns and colors and fabrics and we’re very sure these people are not buying their clothes from big box stores in malls.

So take a tiny fashion risk for 2009. Wear something a little weird to work today.