About fashion stylists

Texto en español, aqui.

“Essentially what you’re doing is collaborating with the photographer to create an image that reflects the fashion you’re trying to capture and also hold a mirror  up to the zeitgeist at the moment.”

— Hamish Bowles —

The manifestation of the specialization of team members has historically been the result of the process of consolidating fashion photography and its professionalization. They assume the different tasks involved in the construction of a fashion image in the terms that this blog formulates in its name—The Constructed Moment.

Some authors, in their records, tell about how during the first fashion sessions, the models would do their own make up and prepare their garments. From this we can only assume that the first members of a shooting, back then, were the photographer and the model.

I still haven’t been able to properly document how the new pieces of this set up came to happen (and I’m grateful for any information any of you can give me). Asking other people about the topic for this entry [1], they tell me that hairdressers used to have recognition above make-up artists—and most likely, a little bit of more participation during the early stages of a shooting— as for the make-up artists, I believe that images in color had to generate the pressing need of incorporating a professional; someone responsible of making the skins of the models give a perfect registry on magazines.

As I understand, stylists also join shootings as the ones responsible for garments in a simultaneous way to make up artists. The acknowledgement of this task was consolidated by Vogue (led by Anna Wintour) when they published credits over the images on the magazine. In fact, magazines like i-D and Dazed advanced this process in the 80s and consolidated it in the 90s by naming the stylist as a part of the team that made the photographic content of the magazine a reality.

Nowadays, we can say that a minimal photo shooting has a photographer, a model, a make-up artists and or a hairdresser and last, yet more frequent and essential, a stylist. 

I say a ‘minimal photo shooting’ because it’s almost impossible to currently find a photo shooting that doesn’t have a stylist. In terms of fashion, the stylist is like the conductor of an orchestra. He or she is the one that interprets the sheet music in front of them, this understood in terms of fashion. Another way to confirm the importance of this role is by observing the prominence of some people in the industry: Polly Mellen, Grace Coddington, Giovanna Battaglia, Nicola Formichetti, Emmanuelle Alt, Anna Dello Russo and Edward Enninful, just to mention a few. These stylists share the same level of recognition as many of the most prestigious photographers, magazine’s editors, designers in the fashion world.

A good stylist is capable of giving a new vision to garments.

It is a common issue in fashion that brands, beyond the imaginary scenarios they produce, question the new meaning their products will elicit once under the editorial approach of photography. This contrast comes from the fear to misunderstand the message the brand wants to deliver; I personally think that there is no reason for the mistrust. If we are strategic for a moment, both brand and magazine will bond when there is a common target: they share the same audience; hence, they have to share some characteristics. When the target public of a magazine is not the same as the brand’s then, it could also be understood as an opportunity to reach a new audience. Another important fact is that an editorial leaves little room to be interpreted as a language for the published brands, since it is already a clear concept announced on the header.

A brand needs to know that a loan of garments means recognition by giving credit to the products. This can be convenient at times, and yet sometimes, it could be wiser not to do so, which led me to reflect about giving proper credit in magazines. A couple of months ago, while I was reading a magazine, and being impressed by some style I saw, I looked for the credits to know who had created it and was surprised by realizing there wasn’t any. The name of the make-up artist was there, but not the stylist’s.

To the magazines which are not yet giving proper credit to stylists, I’m telling you, it’s time to acknowledge this part of evolution in the industry. It is fundamental to do it, since this person, in the case of the best, is interpreting fashion and is capable of reading the aesthetic sensitivity of the ultimate consumer, who is the at the end of the day, the spectator of the constructed images.

[1] in conversations with William Cruz and Laura Echavarria

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Too much is not best.

 Texto en español, aqui

“Less is more.”

—  LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE —

 "Once machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men.
No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.”
— ELBERT HUBBARD —

“Our job should be making people dream.”
— GIANNI VERSACE —

There are more and more photographers everyday. However, even though the quantity of them increases, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the quality of the images we see on a daily basis is any better. With this amount of new photographers trying to break ground, comes an amount of low-quality images in almost every means, which in return are sponsored by those who have an inadequate ability to assess what is photographic and are deciding what material is going on print; starting from the authors themselves and ending in the so-called editors.

We have left behind the famous less is more, which in terms of photography refers to the final shot, the one that would survive a rigorous selection process and would come victorious at the end of a shooting; it was synonym of a more efficient and convincing communication. It was a unique image resulting of the publishing cost.

Nowadays, we want lots of pictures, whose quality is not important. We want a thousand different shots of the same subject in order to share them in another thousand social network outlets, thanks to the lowest publishing cost it conveys. In many cases, images no longer make the difference and yet they do help ego manifest as being present during a photography production: I was there!

I’ve been telling this to my clients more often, lately. They are the direct beneficiaries of the image. In much less times, I’ve told this to others who are responsible for the image and who, at the same time, are more preoccupied with taking a picture with their cell-phone instead of paying attention to what is going to be the final shot they are going to receive. All this comes with questioning whether or not they are aware of the fact that what is on the line is the image of their brand; the image that will be a projection of their work and is not a photo to remember.

I recall an anecdote of a photographer whose client asked him if he had a certain photo, speaking of it not in relation to the clothing on it but as if she’d taken it from the place and angle where she was. Her cell-phone was at the center of the photographic production.

In the same way, I see more fellow photographers talking ‘professional’ in regard to the way to use the camera, not the construction of the image. They describe the photographer who offers his equipment, has locations available, edits and archives the result of the shooting as professional. These are matters that don’t reflect directly on the final image and that in other places are characteristics of the photographer’s professionalism. The clients by means of the producer of the image are the ones who directly pay for locations, rent of the necessary equipment and obtain as an additional service the archiving and retouching of the images. In these places, the photographer offers a simple and fundamental service: make an image that is convincing when communicating.

Anything else is nothing but words.

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