**Warning: Some images featured in this article are considered NSFW.**

Fashion photographer Corinne Day is the photographer who reflected the attitudes of the anti-fashion movement most distinctly, with a raw, unpolished style that depicted her models without embellishment. Informed by her own negative experiences as a model, Day sought to strip away the veneer of glamor that characterized fashion photography before her and inject some reality into a world of dishonest fantasy. The legacy of the legendary photographer can be explored through her style, collaborators, and controversy.


Having dropped out of school at the age of 16, Day bounced between jobs until she was prompted to pursue modeling in a chance conversation with a photographer on an airline flight. She continued as a catalog model for a number of years before meeting fellow model Mark Szaszy on a train in Japan in 1985. In the subsequent years Szaszy taught Day how to use a camera, and the couple moved together to Milan in 1987. During this period, Day began to develop her signature candid style, taking casual photographs of her model friends while looking for magazine work.

Third Summer of Love editorial photographed by Corinne Day, featuring Kate Moss, July 1990.

“The Third Summer of Love,” her first editorial work, was finally published in The Face magazine in July 1990. The editorial depicted a half-undressed Kate Moss laughing alone on the beach. The photos do not look like a formal magazine editorial; the casual manner in which Moss is posed and photographed looks incredibly natural relative to the manufactured shoots of Day’s contemporaries. Day was formally staking her claim on a new style with this editorial. This period marked the beginning of Day and Moss’s working relationship. Day was only ever sent new, inexperienced models by casting agencies, and she picked Moss from Storm modeling agency’s lineup due to her similarities to herself. Moss was, by the standards of the time, an awkward model, and was too skinny and short for most magazines’ desires. However, seeing herself in Moss, Day chose to photograph Moss and would continuously shoot her over the subsequent years. They looked similar, shared music tastes, and both awkwardly fit clothes - the pair was perfectly matched.

Corinne Day editorial for Miu Miu S/S 1994 featuring Rosemary Ferguson

"...really, I really just want to take snaps of whats happening in front of me, rather than being a fashion photographer. " - Corinne Day in 'Diary' documentary from 2003.

Following this success, Day moved to London, and began a close collaborative relationship with stylist Melanie Ward. Ward and Day shared many tastes, including a mutual love of vintage clothes, and their stylistic overlap allowed the two to work with an incredible degree of synergy. Among their most iconic editorials together was The Face’s 1993 editorial “England’s Dreaming,” with model-muses George and Rosemary photographed in George’s apartment and George wearing his own clothes. Everything about the shoot was casual and organic, encapsulating Day’s casual, documentarian style perfectly. 

Corinne Day 'Under Exposed' editorial featuring Kate Moss, 1993

Day shot one other iconic editorial in 1993, entitled “Under Exposed.” Moss was once again the subject, this time photographed in her own apartment and wearing only ill-fitting lingerie. The photos are stark, eschewing the flirtatious confidence normally associated with lingerie shoots in favor of a vulnerability that verges on tragedy - Moss looks closer to tears than laughter in these photos. In fact, Moss had just been fighting with her boyfriend prior to the shoot, and the sadness depicted in these images was entirely natural. The photos quickly incited controversy, especially in the context of the “heroin chic” debate, with critics calling the images exploitative and claiming that they glamorized eating disorders. This controversy would become a recurring problem for Day, who eventually withdrew from fashion into music and her own autobiographical photography to escape the criticism. 


Concurrently, both Kate Moss and Melanie Ward stopped working with Day. Both women were, at that point, working in establishment high fashion environments from which Day felt excluded, driving a wedge between the creative aspirations of them and Day. Each also had individual career disputes with Day. Moss’s modeling agency objected to the rawness with which Day photographed her, which departed drastically from the typical level of retouching in photography of the era. Ward criticized Day for taking her work too personally - an allegation which Day herself admitted to be true - and ceased their partnership as a consequence. 



Goths on Acid Editorial by Corinne Day for Raygun Magazine, June 1995

During her withdrawal period from fashion, Day had her first encounter with cancer. In 1996, she went to sleep one night and woke up shaking uncontrollably. She was rushed to the hospital, and awoke once again surrounded by doctors. She was diagnosed with a brain tumor and was immediately prepared for surgery. Day asked the friend accompanying her to document the entire process with her camera, and these photographs are included as some of the most emotional images in her autobiographical photo book “Diary.” Fortunately, the surgery was successful, and life returned to relative normalcy for Day. 


Day was pulled back into fashion photography through a budding friendship with now legendary stylist Panos Yiapanis. Day met Yiapanis while he was studying art in London. When they met, Day showed Yiapanis some of her earlier photographs. The future stylist was drawn to the grittiness of her photography and begged her to return to the fashion world in full force. She agreed so long as he joined her, and the pair’s joint epitomization of the anti-fashion attitude produced some of the most definitional editorial photos for the movement. To this day, Panos frequently credits Day as the person who opened the door for his entry into the fashion industry. Around the same time, Day and Moss reunited, and Day shot the iconic photograph of Moss in a Rick Owens distressed leather jacket from Day’s own wardrobe, which was published in French Vogue in 2001. This photo would prove instrumental in fueling Owens’s ascent into fashion stardom, with the subsequent years turning his small-scale West Hollywood venture into an international fashion business.

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Tragically, the return of her illness would cut Day’s life abruptly short. The previous surgery had been successful, but the cancer returned in 2009. Despite attempted treatment, the cancer killed her in 2010. Supposedly, she was buried in the [leather jacket](https://032c.com/magazine/brenda-s-business-with-rick-owens) from the iconic 2001 Vogue photo. Her photographs are left behind as her legacy.


Even today, the photography style of Corinne Day remains distinctly recognizable. Her photographs are characterized by a meticulously crafted messiness, with clothes and makeup carefully executed to create the illusion of rawness. The resulting photos were almost accessible, kept just barely out of reach by the beauty of her models themselves. Her photos were frequently taken in unassuming locations - often the models’ own homes - and subjects often wore their own clothes or vintage garments from Day’s own wardrobe. Day was resistant to the polished finishes that were expected at the time, favoring instead real intimacy and vulnerability from her models - a preference which on multiple occasions drew the ire of the agencies of the models with whom she worked. Despite their protests, her style led to some of the most iconic fashion photography of the 1990s and 2000s, a beacon of reality in a sea of made-up fantasy.

Sticky Finger editorial for Dutch Magazine photographed by Corinne Day, September 2001

Day’s work was criticized at the height of the heroin chic craze as pornographic, exploitative, and glamorizing drug use. However, her critics fundamentally misunderstood her role in the creation of these images. Day was reacting against her earlier experiences in front of the camera as a model, resenting the way photographers always transformed her into someone she was not and seeking to avoid the same treatment of her own models. She wiped away the made-up glamor of 1980s fashion photography and revealed the tragedy and pain of the girls behind the facade. The images critics found so discomforting were not constructed by her - they were there all along, a product of an industry seeking younger and younger models in increasingly vulnerable positions. This vulnerability was, in a sense, autobiographical, reflecting her own resentment towards the photographers who misrepresented her when taking her picture. Day presented viewers with the harsh reality underneath the veneer of confidence and ease they were used to. Audiences were content to consume the content in front of them when that exploitation was hidden - only when forced to reckon with it did they object. 

Day’s images leave both photography and fashion with a legacy which cannot be overlooked. Her distinctive style epitomized the anti-fashion movement, intensifying the emotions of both the clothes and the people she photographed. In an era when airbrushed facades have returned to dominance in fashion photography, her work feels as necessary and refreshing as it was at the start of her career, and her photos will continue to shine as a beacon of reality in a sea of artificiality.

For those interested in learning more about Corinne Day's work, we encourage you to watch this documentary from 2003 that was created by her husband which gives an inside look on her personal life and behind the scenes video from photoshoots over the decades. 

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Day’s images leave both photography and fashion with a legacy which cannot be overlooked. 

Corinne Day: The Anti-Fashion Photographer

ARCHIVE.pdf, in collaboration with photographer Angela Ricciardi, presents our exclusive backstage coverage of Ann Demeulemeester’s Spring/Summer 2025 show.

Behind the scenes at Ann Demeulemeester S/S '25

Since the brand’s purchase by Claudio Antonioli in 2020, the house has been working to reconnect to its archive and the work of its founder. Appointed in 2023, creative director Stefano Gallici has begun to build his own vision for Ann Demeulemeester, balancing his reverence for its founder and his desire to bring the brand into the future. Community and music have been central to Gallici’s vision, as he has brought together a creative community of artists, designers, and musicians around the house. 
	That love of music was on full display for Spring 2025, with guitarist Marco Fusinato opening the show with a distorted, droning performance. The collection which followed showed Gallici weaving between archival homages and contemporary aesthetics. Reissued pieces included: an off-shoulder mohair sweater, originally from Fall 2005; embroidered lace pieces, originally from Spring 2007; and a sharpened, severe rework of the strapped pirate boots from Spring 2003. 

Amelia Walker, womenswear designer for the brand and former Carol Christian Poell assistant, talked us through the design process for the collection. Stefano sought to balance rigid tailoring with something soft and draped, leading to the juxtaposition of strong-shouldered jackets with bias-cut draped pieces. Dresses had modular strap systems that allow the wearer to alter the height of the neckline and length of the hem – “It’s really supposed to look like it’s falling off the body.” That same bias draping was present on another skirt, with a leg slit that emulated that same sense of “falling off” while in motion. The challenge for the collection was to find the right mix of disheveled “morning after” messiness and chic elegance. Complex layering by stylist Elodie David aided this, and led to the creation of some of the distressed jersey pieces. The pieces were distressed just before the show by her and Gallici, creating holes that reveal the layers of fabrics underneath. This balance of sophistication and chaos recalled the rockstar sensibilities Stefano so lovingly seeks to capture with his clothes.  

The most modernized looks included signature Demeulemeester Victorian blouses paired with massive baggy denim – Walker says these denim pieces have been a big commercial success for the brand, and that the team appreciates customers stepping on the hems and tearing them up through wear. These looks, however contemporary, were rooted back in the brand’s history through makeup done by Belgian legend Inge Grognard, the omnipresent Antwerp makeup artist whose touch is felt in the work of countless Royal Academy graduates. 

Included in our coverage are photographs shot by Angela Ricciardi that depict both backstage and the runway show itself, and a behind-the-scenes short film. 


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Ann Demulemeester S/S 2025 Backstage

Fall/Winter 2025 was a season of Martin Margiela. References abound: new tabi iterations debuted both within the Maison in collaboration Louboutin and without at Kiko Kostadinov; Adrian Appiolaza’s Moschino continued to collide Franco Moschino’s wit with deconstructivism; and Junya Watanabe showed wig jackets that called back to the ones shown in Margiela’s final collection for Spring 2009. Returns to the Margiela archive are nothing new; it has been years since the designer left fashion, but nods to his language appear season after season. However, behind this particular season of references was a pair of sales of pieces from the Margiela archive, with one hosted by Kerry Taylor Auctions and Maurice Auctions, and the other by Byronesque Vintage. The former sale focused on the earliest years of the label, while the latter offered a wardrobe-style collection composed of everyday pieces from seasons spanning the designer’s career. Against the backdrop of a season peppered with returns to the Martin Margiela archive, the dramatically diverging viewpoints of these two Margiela sales provide valuable insights into the work of the ever-influential designer.

The year began with Margiela: the Early Years, hosted in collaboration between Maurice and Kerry Taylor Auctions. The collection was composed of garments from the personal collections of Angela and Elena Picozzi – daughters of Martin Margiela’s former pattern-maker, Graziella Picozzi – and consisted of accessories, pieces, full looks, and even sketchbooks from the years of 1988-1994. During PFW Men’s, the pieces were on display to the public, with the auction concluding at the end of the week. The auction broke records, netting the highest prices Margiela’s archive has ever seen, topping out at a full look from Spring/Summer 1990 that sold for 101,400 euros.

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Byronesque Vintage’s Martin Margiela: Not an Auction provided a very different look into Margiela’s oeuvre. The company’s focus is on the sourcing and sale of contemporary vintage fashion, with a curatorial eye for identifying the clothes that are important enough to deserve retrospective attention. Byronesque has sold a lot of Margiela, hallmarked by a 2017 sale that drew a line out the door. Put-off by the hype, the company was seduced back into the Margiela race by the unique opportunity posed by this sale. The clothes came from Christina Ahlers, who worked as a member of Martin Margiela’s team until 2006, and represented an accumulation of clothes acquired to be worn, not preserved. They were presented on unremarkable clothing racks, in a white apartment, with white sheets over the furniture, and minimal merchandising — an incredibly Margiela setting. But this was not the carefully-curated museum selection of The Early Years — this was a wardrobe.

Iconic pieces like cigarette shoulder jackets (A/W ‘91) and ‘Doll’s Wardrobe’ sweaters (S/S ‘99) were shown alongside simple waistcoats, knits, and dresses, all possessing subtle details that remind us of the designer’s distinctive hand.

Byronesque founder Gill Linton says, “What I like about this collection is that it’s the Margiela uniform of people who were part of his world at the time. Who didn’t imagine that it would be so important decades later.” This is a sale composed of pieces of fashion history – but it is also a sale of everyday clothes.

When a designer like Margiela ascends to the realm of myth, and their work is experienced more through museum retrospectives than shop floors or daily wear, their greatness is reduced to spectacle: untouchable clothes representing unimpeachable legacies. The tactility and embodiment of their work is a luxury experienced by only the lucky few. But these are some of the qualities most important for understanding the works of great designers. This is especially true of Martin Margiela, who was at once an incredible orchestrator of artistic spectacle and the visionary architect of a way of dressing that is to be lived, not just seen. His investment in the everyday is most distilled in his A/W ‘93 collection film, which followed seven women going about their days in locations and looks of their choosing. 

Margiela’s approach celebrated the relationships we develop with our clothes – through experience, through DIY, through styling, and through their eventual destruction. The white box of the modern museum provides a blank canvas against which Margiela’s designs can express their details clearly, but its harsh light dispels that deeply personal sense of intimacy. Byronesque’s sale, presenting a wardrobe in a small Paris apartment, reclaimed some of that emotional resonance in a time when its role in Margiela’s work is often rendered invisible. 

By no means is this a criticism of The Early Years auction; this was a collection of garments the likes of which will never be seen again, and the eye-watering prices they garnered were nonetheless deserved. The face of Margiela with which they engaged deserved the deification of that auction format. But we cannot let that spectacular, legendary, historically-entrenched Martin Margiela overshadow the intimate, light-handed, personal Martin Margiela. The two characters are the product of the same team of designers, and the same body of work, and must be appreciated in tandem to fully appreciate MMM. 

Thank you to both teams for offering us opportunities to appreciate the different sides of Maison Martin Margiela.

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In a season of full of Margiela references, two contrasting auctions offer insights into two different sides of the designer’s language.

The Two Faces of Martin Margiela

Fashion is defined by change. From early couturiers who dictated the season’s silhouette through to today's spinning carousel of creative directors, this industry has been defined by its rapid pace. In the face of such movement, obstinate designers who insist upon a uniform creative vision offer a refreshing change of pace from the frenetic dynamism of the industry at large. Such is the case for Jan-Jan Van Essche, who is the subject of a retrospective exhibition at MoMu that is currently on display.

Jan-Jan Van Essche graduated from Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 2003, waiting until 2010 to launch his eponymous label. The brand is based out of Atelier Solarshop, which he runs with his partner Pietro Celestina. Since then, Jan-Jan has been developing a distinctive design language rooted in geometric pattern-making, traditional fabrics, and natural dyes. Jan-Jan’s consistency of voice, with a quiet insistence on his core concepts, has enabled him to co-curate an exhibition at MoMu which is almost contradictory: a retrospective exhibition presented through a current collection.


Spring/Summer 2025’s collection is entitled “Khayal,” named after an improvisational Indian music style. Like most of Jan-Jan’s collections, it contains all of the key aspects from the design vocabulary he has developed over the past 15 years. The collection is dynamic and genderless, with voluminous silhouettes that offer unrestricted movement, rich tactility, and ease: true luxury. Displaying Jan-Jan’s clothes in static form does not do them justice; his garments have a fluidity that must be felt as much as seen. To remedy this, custom mannequins were produced by Rune Tuerlinckx out of reclaimed wood, positioned askew to provide a suggestion of movement that animates the clothes. The “models” stand atop a film of golden yellow sand, contrasting the muted tones of the clothes. 

The 10 looks that compose the exhibition are broken down into 5 focal points, beginning with a focus on silhouette, and the role of layering in constructing the volumes that make Jan-Jan’s shapes so distinctive. It proceeds into a segment on the brand’s focus on hand-weaving, done in through two collaborations. The first is with Senegalese artist Lamine Diouf, who also wove the curtains through which the mannequins are viewed, and the second with Rituraj Dewan’s company 7Weaves, which works with indigenous weavers in the forests of Northeast India. The subsequent section focuses on Jan-Jan’s pattern-making, with key shapes presented alongside a deconstructed pair of garment-dyed denim pants that was previously used for an exhibition at Tokyo’s Lift. The final two sections focus on Jan-Jan’s obsession with natural dyeing processes and knitwear production.

Jan-Jan Van Essche has spent 15 years cultivating a language of expression rooted in consistent principles – a consistency which rewards Jan-Jan with the capacity for this novel form of retrospection. His body of work reminds us of the importance of commitment, self-assuredness, and conviction in one’s own perspective.

Khayal is on display at MoMu until June 8, 2025.

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An exhibition at MoMu displays a retrospective of Jan-Jan Van Essche's work through a presentation of his S/S '25 collection. 

Chris Ziebert

Writer

Corinne Day: The Anti-Fashion Photographer

Ann Demulemeester S/S 2025 Backstage

The Two Faces of Martin Margiela

A Retrospective Present: Jan-Jan Van Essche's "Khayal"