Use of Models and Photography in Fashion

Some weeks ago, I watched the 1960's film 'Breathless' starring Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo.

Jean Seberg as Patricia Franchini

A young model, well actor in this case. Has a boyish look

Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo

I was reminded of this film as I saw a recent French Connection advertisement in 'The stylist' paper.

I interpreted it that Models were used to suggest that they act and respond in a certain way. the way the ideal model wears the branded clothing. Also that their clothing reflects this cool appearance.

I like the way that photography has been used to appropriate the clothing.

Here are the images:

I Like these because they are appropriated in a way to suggest that this is not just the fashion but the way of a lifestyle. There is an element of aspiring to these models as some sort of benchmark for success. i.e 'This is the women', 'This is how she reclines'. The text takes on quite a traditional view of the female model.

The campaign has played around with the male model. 'Man should be brave' when the imagery clearly makes the man look feminine, or at least makes reference to bunny ears typically seen worn by a women as some erotic symbol. Maybe he has to be brave to change his appearance?

Final images

Here are the 5 final images that we selected.

Choosing the final images

I would consider the shoot we did on Tuesday as successful. There is always more one could do in capturing more images but we have some strong images that I think captured a retro feel without being obviously too

On Thursday 4th (Feb) we met again as a group to look through the contact sheets from the shoot an choose our final images to submit.

Although it was quite challenging to select only 5 images, we tried to identify the strongest ones compositionally and those with the best styling!

contact sheets continued

Here are a few images that were shot on Kodak TMax 400, 120 Film

All set for the shoot

Every thing was scheduled for the shoot on Tuesday 2nd Feb. We ended up doing the whole of the shoot in the studio, which worked out really well. The model was ideal and the clothing the stylists used were great. Here are the contact sheets from the shoot.

Other bits for the shoot

For the shoot we further decided to do a studio shoot. although we reserved location lighting equipment should the weather be favourable, we had the studio as our main setup for the shoot


This Monday (1st) we as a group went out to a fabric shop in Preston to source some material for backgrounds to the shoot because we wanted to add some further narrative to the shots apart from only the clothing.

We found a brown circle pattern and a multi coloured lined pattern material that we will use in the shoot.

Retro Shoot

As a group we had decided to use a male model for the shoot and I knew someone that would suit this theme.

Eve and Terri had been sourcing clothing that has a retro look.

They had found waistcoats, shirts, skinny ties, jeans, trousers, cardigans, bow ties, hats and black sun glasses.

Shoot ideas

As a result of meeting with Terri and Eve from our group for the photo shoot, ideas started to evolve from postings on our blogs and we decided to do a shoot around a retro theme.


The main postings on our blogs that had an influence on our shoot were; Terri's posting of Simon Foxton's project - Strictly, Eve's on Platon 'He's English man in New York’ and a posting that I did on retro images from '125' magazine.

Jason Evans & Simon Foxton's project - Strictly

Platon 'He's English man in New York’

'125' Magaine, recent issue

Although the theme could take us in several avenues, we thought about the ideal model, male or female and then whether a location or studio shoot would be most relevant.

I started to think about people I knew who would be suited as a model. I also started to look at posing as I knew this would be influential within a shoot.

I also started to consider posing and look around for poses that I felt were different and striking. Rankin's images are exceptional in my opinion for posing.

I came across this image for a Tom Ford advert.

I like it as a basic side on view has been made to be quite strong due the pose of the models head being boldly turned to look at the viewer. It seem to create a dominant figure by posing them in this way that could have normally been quite flat.