Fashionista Friday… The National Portrait Gallery…London

Soundtrack provided by fabulous guest DJ Princess Julia...

More from NPG...London

British Fashion designer Gareth Pugh

Face of Fashion party...NPG...London

'A fashion picture is a portrait; just as a portrait is a fashion picture.' Irving Penn, 1950
Face of Fashion is a major exhibition focusing on the portraits of five outstanding fashion photographers from Europe and America: Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott, Corinne Day, Steven Klein, Paolo Roversi and Mario Sorrenti. It is the first exhibition of its kind, celebrating the innovation and diversity of current fashion portraiture.

Fashion photography dominates our visual culture. Never has it been so prevalent, pervasive and wide-ranging, incorporating as subjects not only the most popular professional models but also our greatest actors, musicians, sporting heroes, filmmakers, designers and dancers. With the boundaries between advertising, editorial and fine art now blurred, the world's most famous fashion photographers are shaping our ideas of beauty, sexuality and fame.

Sometimes supporting a glamorous aesthetic, sometimes subverting it, fashion photography is at the height of its powers and its leading exponents among the great image-makers of our time. Mert & Marcus, Corinne Day, Steven Klein, Paolo Roversi and Mario Sorrenti are each unique and distinctive in style. Together these portraits explore the intimacy that exists between photographer and the subject and how this relationship, sometimes perceived to be exploitative, frequently empowers both parties.

Face of Fashion is curated by Susan Bright, independent curator and writer, author of Art Photography Now, published in 2005 by Thames & Hudson. The exhibition installation is designed by David Adjaye and opens with London Fashion Week 2007...

'Face of Fashion offers the chance to enjoy great photographic portraits away from the bustle of the magazine page - we can see stars transformed through their collaboration with these photographers' said Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery...

Susan Bright, Curator of Face of Fashion says: 'The diversity of the photographers featured in Face of Fashion shows that the fashion magazine remains a vibrant place for portraiture, and that the work we see there deserves a considered examination.'

Coinciding with our Face of Fashion exhibition, Individuals: 20 Portraits from the Gap Collection (12 February - 28 May 2007) brings together 20 stunning portraits of leading authors, actors and musicians by eminent photographers including Herb Ritts, Annie Leibovitz and Albert Watson...

"Backstage at Eley Kishimoto"...
filmed during London Fashion Week Feb 2007...

The husband-and-wife team Eley Kishimoto was established in 1992. Since 1998 they have produced twice-yearly collections and their colourful shows have become one of the highpoints of London Fashion Week… To mark their tenth anniversary, they had a mini-retrospective at the Victoria & Albert Museum in the form of three-archive catwalk shows…

They have always been innovators and Mark Eley is a fellow blogger…we love their style, their prints and how wearable their clothes are.