From the sketch in the design studio to the textile factory and the photo shoot, fashion is the art of decorating the body. After a Vogue Italia shoot in 2007, photographer Michelangelo Di Battista and sketch artist Tina Berning began working together to produce mixed-media photographs that collapse the ink-textile-image phases of the fashion process. Berning ‘wardrobes’ Di Battista’s black-and-white fashion images with pen sketches, and veils them in loose textiles. The show’s over 30 images reassemble an industry production line, but in this case, photography precedes design: the intervening stages – the dual skins of body and garment – are flayed off, leaving only the photographic record in the middle.
