To understand the work of the English photographer Alexander McLellan the best thing is to check out his record collection. It is from these, and not behind the doors of fashion houses or on the catwalks, that one of the most respected image creators draws inspiration. With the Executive Creative Director of Harper’s Bazaar Italia Lee Swillinghamwith whom he speaks in this chat, shares an interest in British pop subculture, a point of reference for both of them, a precise opinion on the subtle difference between fashion and style, an idea tinged with understatement on what is cool.
Lee Swillingham: «I loved the moodboard you prepared for your story, featuring Japan’s David Sylvian and Altered Images’ Clare Grogan. I think the connection between music, fashion photography and style is a very British thing.”
Alexander McLellan: «The moodboard is by stylist Alice Goddard, who is not of that generation. She was listening to David Sylvian and liked his style. So you’re referring to someone who didn’t live through that era.”
L.S.: “Well, we didn’t experience it either.”
A.M.: «I was there, but I was more or less four years old at the time».
Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe/Getty Images
Bernard Sumner, vocals and guitar of New Order, in Mansfield in 1987
L.S.: «When I started listening to Japan, the band was already breaking up. But I loved their music and their image. David Sylvian always had a fantastic look, in recent photos he wore Antony Price and Yohji Yamamoto. That was probably my first experience of fashion linked to music, and even in your work I have always noticed the connections between fashion and music.”
A.M.: «When I think about the pop stars I grew up with in the late 70s and early 80s I realize that style was very important back then. The Smiths, the Pet Shop Boys, but also hip hop: it was all in the image. I approached photography thanks to record covers.”
L.S.: «I imagined it».
A.M.: «From a very young age I wanted to make music, but it seemed like an impossible mission. At one point I went with my friends to a recording studio in Doncaster, but it was too expensive. But when I looked at the images on the album covers I thought: ok, this could be a job. This is how I started photography. I remember recreating the Pet Shop Boys covers, including the Behavior album, for my GCSE* at art school and thinking: I might be able to be a graphic designer. I took the photos, created the graphics, everything in short.”
L.S.: “Fantastic! I think the two of us are very similar in this respect. I looked at magazines and record covers and told myself that I would like to make music, but that perhaps I should have taken care of graphics, layouts and fonts.”
© EMI
Chris Lowe of Pet Shop Boys on the cover of the 1986 single Suburbia (The Full Horror).
A.M.: «I understood that to do it I would have to move to London. You’re from Manchester, where a lot more stuff happens than in Doncaster, but at least I had a camera and anything seemed possible. It didn’t go the way I wanted, partly because the environment was a bit like a boys’ club and also because I felt too much responsibility to do everything well.”
L.S.: «It’s true, it all seemed too technical to me too».
A.M.: «At the beginning I took care of the record covers and took photos of my friends because I only had them available. Where I come from there are no modeling agencies. But I had noticed the photographs of Corinne Day and David Sims as well as the relationship that both had with the stylist Melanie Ward and I thought that the reference to the music of the late 70s and early 80s was evident. At that time we were looking at a a lot of fashion photography that came from America, for Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren advertisements, but what they were doing at The Face was something else entirely, it seemed much more original.”
L.S.: «I absolutely agree. Also because here in the United Kingdom we didn’t have the big fashion houses like in other European countries.”
A.M.: «There was Burberry or Aquascutum, and then there was Vivienne Westwood who is an eternal punk icon, and then came New Wave and the New Romantics. I believe that everything has always had a connection with music.”
L.S.: «It has to do with the subculture, don’t you think? I notice the references in the shot with the model Libby Bennett, with that look that recalls the era of David Sylvian, David Bowie and the Young Americans. It’s all unmistakably British. There’s that androgyny that was very popular in the 70s and 80s. Speaking of Manchester, where Libby is also from: I know you’re a New Order fan. Has this band had an influence on any of your shots, as the Smiths have had in the past?
A.M.: «Yes, somehow. In particular, I loved their aesthetic from 1987-89, when their color scheme had moved towards more acidic and pastel tones. I liked Bernard Sumner’s hairdo. A special mention also goes to Chris Lowe of the Pet Shop Boys, who in my opinion was the best dressed person of the 80s. With those Issey Miyake glasses and the one he wore for the cover of the single Suburbia, in addition to the fact that he had a one of the most beautiful T-shirts I’ve ever seen: a striped T-shirt with the words “Poshboy”».
Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images
David Bowie in a portrait from 1976
L.S.: «Your memories are impressive, as is the way you mention names, titles and dates».
A.M.: «And we’re talking about times when there was no Internet, so you could see something on TV once and never again, unless you recorded it. And the same was true with fashion, sometimes you’d end up with a copy of what you’d seen a pop star wearing because in reality we didn’t have the original available in the UK. It was always a version that wasn’t entirely correct, because it came from memory.”
L.S.: «And this is exactly what I love about the British style in fashion photography. The styling always has that Melanie Ward way of mixing the old with the new.”
*The GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) is an exam taken by all secondary school students in the UK at age 16. The A Level, at 18, corresponds to the Italian high school diploma and allows access to university
