Harley Weir, Re-Edition, Issue 1, Spring 2015
Harley and I decided to shoot in Moscow. At the time I didn’t have an assistant and embarked on the journey with multiple suitcases full of Vetements, Margiela, Bless, a couple of advertisers and of course, Prada. Location was the Sovetskiy Hotel. It would become one of those shoots that I feel I will always remember. Casting was very important. We wanted to reflect the young and free generation of the time. Our friends had a local casting agency Lumpen, and it was on this shoot that I met lots of amazing young personalities who would later become friends and collaborators, I’d say this shoot sort of marked that era for me. The cast was real, there was no hair and make-up. Boys and girls wore the same dresses, trousers were worn very high, there were tons of Vetements, folkloric patterns, flower prints and carpets. It felt like a breath of fresh and slightly provocative air. I loved those early shoots because they were very spontaneous: nothing was prepped, we got the clothes we could get and there was no production. That’s why they felt like a mix of documentary and fashion.

Harley Weir, Balenciaga, Spring/Summer 2017
This is definitely one of my favorite campaigns I have ever done. It was so grand and majestic, perfect for the collection that I felt was very fetishistic.

Johnny Dufort, Vogue Italia, September 2018
This was another wild adventure back to Russia. This time literally in the middle of nowhere – Chikinskaya – the tiniest village in Arkhangelsk Oblast, which has only a few inhabitants left. I saw a photograph of the Tserkov Pokrova Presvyatoy Bogoroditsy online and felt mesmerized with the decaying beauty of this ancient church built between 1874 and 1889. I sent a friend on a scouting mission to find it. 
The whole journey to get there became a tedious nightmare, cursed, I would even say. This time we were traveling with a whole team from Paris and London, including hair and make-up teams and production. Our flight was late and we managed to miss our connection to Arkhangelsk. It was the Football cup in Moscow, so all hotels were sold out and we had to sleep on the airport floor awaiting our early morning flight. A suitcase got retained in customs which became a nightmare and I didn’t get the clothes back until months after the shoot. One misfortune came after the other and two more suitcases were delayed, arriving on the next flight. Eventually we got into a very old and dusty van taking us to the most quaint authentic Russian village I have ever seen, the closest place to stay to the church. The morning after we had to continue our journey, which consisted of: crossing the river on a tiny wooden old boat, loading rails full of the latest fashion and eventually making it to the other side - to the steps of the Tserkov Pokrova Presvyatoy Bogoroditsy. Upon arrival we realized the church had fallen apart even further and we were literally probably right in time to capture it before its full decay. 
This story was a lot about the quest for spirituality.
We painted the model’s face green to symbolize a Buddha, Günce [Gözütok] was wearing a Gucci embellished outfit that echoed embellishment and colors of Orthodox priests, in another shot you see her wearing a fake moustache sitting inside a van that made us recall the free-spirited hippy-esque Frank Zappa. We were interested in mixing different cultures and embracing spirituality in its different forms. This story became quite a scandal back in Russia with discussions on TV, part of the audience believing it had a positive role in attracting attention to old architecture and its preservation.

Johnny Dufort, System, Autumn/Winter 2018
I have always been a fan of Italy and Milan in particular, so when System called and asked me to shoot a special on Italian fashion, I was very excited. Johnny and I were interested in interpreting various aspects of what Italian culture meant to us. I pulled all big Italian brands and archival designers such as Gianfranco Ferré, Romeo Gigli, Walter Albini and Krizia, shown in this photo. We shot at famous Milanese landmarks and featured Raphael inspired face painting, street chalk artists and local cast among models. We even got to do the last shot at the iconic Latteria, while tasting the infamous lemon pasta. On trips like this it’s all about combining work and pleasure.

Harley Weir, Re-Edition, Issue 10, Autumn/Winter 2018
This was another one of those epic shoots with no production and an adventure. I saw an article about an erotic architecture park on Jeju Island, South Korea and was instantly persuaded that Harley was going to love to shoot there. We got a friend with K-pop connections to contact the park authorities, managed to get a permit and there it was – we were getting on the plane with my assistants, this time, carrying bags full of oversized structures, wearing extra heavy samples that didn’t fit into the overweight suitcases, blagging our way onto the plane saying we were going to a wedding. The theme of the shoot for me was really sculpture. The erotic sculptures at the park were just an element to start me thinking about sculpture in general, and Living Sculpture performances by Gilbert and George in particular. That’s when I thought it was interesting to turn our models into living sculptures – body-paint them gold or silver and use only matching gold or silver clothes and accessories. This was only one part of the shoot that we intended to photograph in nature, randomly stopping on the way to the park. It was an incredibly misty morning, we went into a field and something unexpected happened – a wild horse appeared in the background out of the mist. We couldn’t believe how lucky we were to not only witness, but also capture this moment.

Harley Weir, Re-Edition, Issue 10, Autumn/Winter 2018
These images went further taking living sculpture into exploration of femininity and body. I was shopping for accessories and props for this shoot on all of my trips beforehand and I found this mask and a handmade top in a store in NYC. 

PHOTOGRAPHERHAL, Double, Autumn/Winter 2023 
I encountered PHOTOGRAPHERHAL’s body of work called Flesh Love a few years before this shoot actually happened. “Men and women are attracted to each other and try to become one. This fundamental desire carries an energy that affects all matter in the world. I wonder what is the reason we have to make such an effort to become one.” PHOTOGRAPHERHAL started taking photos of vacuum-packed couples in 2004. 
The extreme romanticism of these photos struck me and I wondered what it would be like to replicate them including fashion. My friends at Babylon casting found couples and family members willing to vacuum pack their love and affection for a maximum of 10 seconds, during which PHOTOGRAPHERHAL took one photo only. Each couple had one or two takes.

Richard Kern, The Face, June 2023 
I always loved Richard’s images of girls in showers.
I thought it could be interesting to expand on that and see our cast of beloved NYC girls fully-dressed yet dripping wet. The Face called the story ‘Drip’.

Julie Greve, Self Service, Spring/Summer 2020
I love photographers who have a universe, a world. It’s interesting for me to see how fashion can fit into their picture without feeling forced or ridiculous unless that’s obviously the point. Julie’s work is exploring “coming of age” and the innocence and playfulness of that moment. Here we were inspired by Marie Antoinette – a modern quirky one of course – a model spotted wearing a fake embellished arm cast by Jenny Fax alongside another extravagant outfit by Comme des Garçons.

Marili Andre, Double, Spring/Summer 2023  
When this shoot came out people couldn’t quite understand if it was real or AI. There is a sense of nostalgia about these images, as well as something not quite definable and obscure, faces that seem familiar yet grotesque. There is a funny story: Marili originally started her AI project under a different name, but we had worked together already in the past. I encountered these images on Instagram pretty late one evening and was so astonished that I messaged that account instantly explaining that I was a stylist working in fashion and was interested to collaborate together. Marili replied to me with a photo of herself laughing at my message, saying how funny my introduction was. 

Alessio Bolzoni, Miu Miu, Spring/Summer 2025
The Miu Miu Spring/Summer 2025 collection had an element of deconstructed dresses creased, pressed and sewn, and basically transformed into bustier pieces. I thought that was an interesting technique to work with for Alessio’s still lives. We folded and creased and pressed various items of clothing and used them as backgrounds for, again, pressed accessories.

Richard Kern, Double, Spring/Summer 2022
I came across the book “Deathtripping: the Cinema of Transgression” at the college library when I was studying fine art at Central Saint Martins. I got drawn to the post-punk underground movement and became a big fan of Richard Kern’s films and photography.  Many years later I messaged Richard on Instagram asking to shoot this iconic Miu Miu Spring Summer 2022 collection special together. After some hesitation Richard agreed and Midland casted the girls, my assistant rented a car and we spent 2 days cruising around NYC taking pictures of models in their own environments with no hair and make up. I love how immediate and direct these portraits are.

Juergen Teller, Ferragamo, Autumn/Winter 2024 
Capturing fashion in the most grand Florence locations with an iPhone is genuinely a punk rock attitude to me. I find these images incredibly beautiful, capturing an Italian heritage brand in the rawest way possible.

Johnny Dufort, Double, Spring/Summer 2022
This shot was originally a part of the shoot commissioned for a magazine but it got cut out of the edit for being too provocative and depicting nudity that wasn’t “conventionally beautiful”. It has been one of my favorite shots and we later on finally published it in the Double portfolio of my work in 2022. Here you can see a club of nudists playing musical chairs. This image was inspired by happenings and performances in the 1970s.  We later on expanded on this concept and photographed more marginalized groups united by shared interests, with models wearing fashion among them.

Michella Bredahl, ALL–IN special, Interview, December 2023
I started working with ALL–IN a couple of seasons ago, and I met Michella Bredahl through August (Bror) and Benjamin (Barron). She has been a part of the ALL–IN family since the beginning, walking in their shows, so it was really fun to be photographed by her at August and Benjamin’s home for the Interview feature. I remember me and Dima being so jet-lagged, trying to stay awake and perform for the pictures. It was important the photos captured the energy of the young designers. We ended up dancing in their bedroom, trying clothes on and eventually jumping  on their bed… which indeed got broken at the end of the shoot 

Pascal Gambarte, ALL–IN, Spring/Summer 2025

Moni Haworth, Double, Autumn/Winter 2024
Moni has been fascinated with Kristina (Nagel) and her work. She really wanted to photograph her, so when I met Kristina in Paris I mentioned it. Kristina said she wasn’t into modeling, but she would do it with only one condition – she would photograph Moni in return. I thought it was a great idea for Double magazine – a true double story, two photographers shooting each other. Then of course I needed to persuade Moni to be photographed, which took a moment, but then here we were – happily ever after – in Daytona Beach, Florida, this summer, with a van full of leather and Saint Laurent’s thinnest, most intricate stocking pieces – it was quite an adventure through swampy lakes, beaches, tropical woods, and the hard reality of biker bars and hangouts. Ultra-feminine see through stockings  with ultra-masculine leather. The highlight of the trip was the infamous Last Resort bar, where Aileen Wuornos was arrested. Kristina said she “never left her comfort zone that far”. We enjoyed imagining her as Sigourney Weaver and Charlize Theron stomping around the wild landscapes of Florida.

Kristina Nagel, Double, Autumn/Winter 2024

Zoë Ghertner, Miu Miu, Spring/Summer 2024
This show had a few highlights for me. The look was someone who had lost their sense of time, chilling on a beach and suddenly realized they had to run to work and had no time to change fully or wash their hair, battled feet covered in colorful Band-Aids, bags stuffed with the chaos of everyday life – full of shoes, sweaters, jackets, wallets, speedos and jewelry, just in case you needed to be ready urgently for any turn of a situation. This became a season that started the bag charm craze. Band-Aids were another funny unexpected addition, our fitting model Bibiana (Csengeri) had a blister on her foot during a fitting. I looked in my bag and found a newly purchased pack of sports colorful Band-Aids from the pharmacy and helped her with one. She stuck it on her foot, I think it was bright neon orange and it struck me as the most graphic accessory perfect for the season’s open boat shoes.

Moni Haworth, Re-Edition, Autumn/Winter 2023
This shoot was basically our love letter to Japan. It was Moni’s first time in Tokyo and she was very excited. Japanese horror movie and anime culture  inspired us to embark on this journey starring Raiki Yamamoto – a young artist who I met through Tenko (Nakajima Glenewinkel ) and her gallery. The shoot consisted of two parts. One was a live Anime character strolling through classically busy streets of Shibuya, Shinjuku and Harajuku dressed head to toe in candy colored mostly bonded leather outfits. The shapes so simple and naive they could easily be forged by a hand of an illustrator. The second part of the shoot was Raiki’s what seemed a never ending quest - waking dream of nostalgic wild fantasy through our favorite Tokyo spots, including Koen-ji, Bar Nightingale, Golden Gai, Tenko’s charming apartment etc. Funny fact: my assistant Toariki (Dexter) had a little acting debut, playing the monster chasing Raiki around Tokyo. A year later Moni and I came back to Japan and continued this project making it into a book, 0081, that came out last year published by SuperLabo.

Michella Bredahl, everyth!ng 001, 2025 
I guess I really enjoy seeing fashion deconstructed. In this case it was interesting for me to see it upside down, falling apart, in constant movement and impossible to control.

Fashion can symbolize a search for perfection and beauty but to me this perfection is relative and I find it beautiful to see an outfit embracing the movement and having a life of its own. What happens to those carefully considered outfits that you see on the catwalk once on a gymnast or a pole dancer in motion? Documenting pole dancers is a part of Michella’s practice, so I was invited as a sort of experiment. It was interesting how it was also very challenging to pole in clothes, fully dressed with shoes and gloves and layers. It was an unusual physical experience for the girls who were either pros or took pole dancing as their hobby.

Julie Greve, Double, Autumn/Winter 2022 
I discovered Patrick Carroll’s brand called Summon Elemental on Instagram. Patrick is an artist and writer who picked up knitting during Covid times and now makes every piece himself in Los Angeles.  According to Patrick it is more of an art project, “It examines the fact that dress is immemorial and at the heart of social life, exploitation, and sensuality”. I liked the idea of seeing those pieces within the frame of Julie’s work.

Johnny Dufort, Hodakova, Spring/Summer 2025 
I have been a fan of Ellen (Hodakova Larsson)’s brand Hodakova for a while at this point. The first time I ever discovered it was at a young designer section at Selfridges. I instantly became a customer. I like the repurposing nature of her work, looking for new ways to wear something familiar, something  that already exists. We managed to work together on her September show, where my friend Lucca (Lutzky) collaborated with Ellen on a series of videos inspired by memories.

Moni Haworth, Double, Autumn/Winter 2022
We shot this story in very typical LA suburbs. We were interested in playing with the supernatural, the occult. I find Moni’s approach to taking photos very fun, it can be extremely straightforward and DIY, reminiscent of B-movies that we both love so much - here you see Dosha (Deng) actually balancing on a stool, hidden by the dress. You don’t always need expensive special effects or post production in order to make a cool image.

Kristina Nagel, Re-Edition, Autumn/Winter 2023 
Kristina and I photographed our friend and artist Anna Uddenberg at the Boros Foundation in Berlin. The building of the foundation used to be a bunker, a fruit storage facility and a techno club before housing an impressive art collection as we know it today.

Moni Haworth, Double, Autumn/Winter 2022
Moni and I really enjoy going on trips together. It’s the most fun to discover places and imagine scenarios and then come back to fulfill them in a photo shoot. Here we are – shooting right in the middle of Monument Valley. No permits, no production. Very guerrilla. We stayed in beautiful cottages at the footsteps of majestic mountains on the edge of the park, each morning driving in with our van to photograph Maty’s (Drazek) journey and transformation through the valley. Impersonating partly a Hollywood old glamour actress, retired in the middle of the dramatic landscape with her chihuahua Atilla in her arms, eyelashes dripping gloss, courtesy of Yadim (who almost didn’t make it to the valley due to a broken down car) partly a prince dressed all in white kidnapped by aliens and turned into a creature with steel wings and eventually dramatic full steel tutu ballerina, twirling through the storm. It was quite a surreal trip!

Kristina Nagel, Double, Spring/Summer 2024 
This is a Phoebe Philo special shot by Kristina and I. We loved the idea of reinterpreting the ultra-chic masculine sharpness and juxtaposing it with pink lipstick and girly silhouettes. I guess I have always been attracted to extremes.

Johnny Dufort, Jean Paul Gaultier x Lotta Volkova, 2022
I have been a big fan of Jean Paul Gaultier for as long as I can remember. Watching his show Eurotrash, co-hosted with Antoine de Caunes, on pirate television in Russia in the 90s was one of my first memories of fashion. So when the opportunity came to collaborate on a capsule collection, I was extremely overwhelmed and smitten. I decided to jump straight into it and re-issue my favorite, most iconic Gaultier pieces. The satin cone bra worn by Madonna, the iconic 1984 dusty lilac cone velvet dress (the original  was couture and never produced), the nude trompe l’oeil dress first designed by Jean Paul circa 1984 this time printed, crushed nappa baby doll dress and top with matching gloves, the Naked bikini –were all re-introduced to a young generation. I thought it was interesting to make those very iconic pieces available to purchase and wear.

What really struck me about Jean Paul was this extreme eccentricity, the uncompromising vision, and celebration of culture, art, and music. It’s this awareness that forms the incredible, extravagant, and extraordinary world of Jean Paul Gaultier which we set out to express in our campaign featuring many of my friends and my beloved poodle Dimitri. The script was classic – the life and death of Dimitri. Atelier even custom made a couture eight cone satin bra to fit Dimitri, and a couture veil for his wife-to-be poodle.

Moni Haworth, Re-Edition, Spring/Summer 2023
This shoot was a kind of series of different episodes starring our friends, featuring artist Isabelle Albuquerque photographed laying among her sculptures in her studio. Each episode was a surreal scene set against a sunny background of Los Angeles. It reminded us of 1980s movies. The juxtaposition of darker and gothier multilayered looks photographed with plain sun and blue sky, whether in Moni’s backyard, in front of palms or on a warehouse roof in the Fashion District with a menacing vision of Downtown reappearing along the story. The images you see here were shot in the valley at a hoarder’s garage filled so full that, little to say, you could hardly get in there yourself, we managed to stuff in a giant blueberry! 

Michella Bredahl, Miu Miu, Spring/Summer 2025
I am a big fan of documentary photography, I love its spontaneity and energy – nothing can compare to that. These images, in my opinion, translate well the backstage chaos and yet stillness, waiting for the show to happen.

Alessandro Furchino Capria, New Balance x Miu Miu, 2024 
I love the simplistic modernity and mesmerizing reality of Alessandro’s images. I find them captivating, incredibly cinematic and pure. It was a priority for me to guard all these sentiments of his work for what could have been a quiet commercial launch shoot for the New Balance x Miu Miu sneaker campaign, but proved to be one of my favorites. So fun to be in bed in your sneakers!

Moni Haworth, 0081, 2024 
Moni and I wanted to go back to Japan and continue the adventures of Raiki. We researched local stories and places of interest with folkloric tone to them. We were interested in old tales and discovered the ancient tradition of ‘Samurai Spiders’ practiced from as early as 1598 in a tiny village Kajiki, tucked away in Japan’s southern Kagoshima prefecture, as well as Nagoro, the Village of the dolls, hidden deep in the valley of Tokushima prefecture. Some might have seen a documentary about this strange place. “As the population of Nagoro declined precipitously, an elderly resident, Tsukimi Ayano, started to replace the people who left or died with life-sized replicas made of straw and old clothes. These dolls are placed naturalistically around the hamlet, in realistic poses. Their purpose is to combat loneliness.”

Upon Raiki’s return to Tokyo she encounters more creatures, this time, from modern folklore: human-size pets including a creature who identifies as a cat and a man who transformed himself into a collie dog saying he wanted to fulfill his childhood dream of becoming an animal and exploring outside as a dog. 

The quest for Raiki’s self ended in her birthplace, Kamakura, a quaint seaside town, south of Tokyo.