Meet the fashion illustrators capturing what runway photographers can’t
Live art illustrators are proving to be the perfect foil for – and perhaps the better alternatives to – street-style and catwalk photographers at fashion weeks
In the social media age, any smartphone-equipped individual can become a photographer, as seen on Apple’s building-tall advertisements.
This is never truer than at fashion events, where snap-happy fashion lovers capture every moment from a myriad of angles and share them on digital platforms, while street-style photographers chronicle the sartorial lives of fashion insiders.
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But as technology brings about a form of hyperrealism, some are turning away from taking photographs. Korean illustrator Suwa Im, who captures the street style of the Paris, New York and Seoul fashion weeks live on paper, says there is charm in capturing “the most attractive features of the figure and feel the charm of a brushstroke quickly drawn”.
Im is tapping into the heritage of René Gruau and Antonio Lopez, and following in the contemporary brushstrokes of British artist David Downton. Downton just celebrated two decades in fashion, and through the recently “DD21” tome chronicling memorable runways for Vogue and portraits of fashion’s royalty, illustration has never felt more current or made fashion feel more alive.
“It’s a new era of fashion paparazzo,” wrote Vogue’s international editor-at-large Hamish Bowles on his Instagram account under a sketch of him by Im.
