DREAM MAKERS

WITH THE REFINED STUDIO PORTRAITS OF THE ’50S AND THE HIGH-CONCEPT GLAMOUR SHOTS OF THE ’90S, FREQUENT L’OFFICIEL CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS ROLAND BIANCHINI, PATRICK BERTRAND, HIROMASA SASAKI, AND FRANCESCO SCAVULLO USHERED IN A NEW ART FORM

- PIPER MCDONALD & TORI NERGAARD

While the outfit featured in every fashion photo is undoubtedly the protagonist, the art direction and technique behind the photo illustrates the garment’s backstory, builds a narrative, and creates a world inhabited by fashion dreams. Though studio photography up until the ’50s did engage with storytelling, from the ’60s onwards L’Officiel began collaborating with a list of talented photographers familiar with the art of storytelling through the image. These photographers reimagined the new collections of ready-to-wear and couture from Paris, creating their own fashion fantasies in the pages of L’Officiel.

In 1966, Roland Bianchini would begin his 13-year career with the magazine. While working as L’Officiel ’s primary photographer, he shot the magazine’s first black cover model – Sandi Collins – as well as French icon Catherine Deneuve and countless fashion collections. The majority of Bianchini’s work took place in-studio, however, he transformed studio photography from the stiff, seamless portraiture of the ’50s into early renditions of the modern editorial.

Bianchini’s era predated the focus on celebrity, so instead he told the stories of the garments themselves. L’Officiel photographers who followed Bianchini, like J-L Guegan and Rodolphe Haussaire, would continue his emphasis on the narrative, employing lighting techniques and using colour saturation to create drama and convey emotion. By the ’70s, the editorial as we know it would begin to appear, and fashion photography as a medium evolved.