i-D Magazine

About me and Matthew Josephs... When was the first time you worked together? Matthew: My friends run a party and collective called Girlcore and they have a website that they to use to promote female creative talent. Ellen's work was on there and I instantly loved it. I found a contact and asked her to work with me. We met up and found that we had all the same obscure references and obsessions with strange anime. Our first project was shot in some woods. We shot my friend Yasmina Dexter nude. Yasmina has become something of a muse for both of us. We were both really happy with the pictures and with working together, so we pitched to i-D. Ellen: We tested together with Yasmina Dexter and I instantly fell in love with her. It was out in the woods all day, with many a dog walker coming back to see what we were up to. Yasmina wore nothing but thigh high lace Alexander McQueen boots - she looked divine. What were your key references for the shoot? E: We don’t tend to use actual images per say. We have a stock idea of what we want to say, and it meets somewhere between fantasy and military photography, haha what does Matthew say? Also it doesn’t hurt that Matthew and I are both mega geeks and reference all manner of our own comic (or in Matthew’s case manga) influences. M: I was listening to and researching industrial bands like Ministry and Nitzer Ebb. So I started with those bands and then looked at how that mood is seeping into what’s happening now. Its important to bring in the contemporary, and for me that involved mixing street wear brands like Bathing Ape and Ambush with Gareth Pugh's wedge heel boots (for men). I think some pictures like the ones of Callum also have a tribal feel - I don’t know where that came from though…haha! I wanted the collages to look like a fanzine - I'd found this amazing one from the 80s called Kill Your Pet Puppy and we wanted to recreate the screen-printed look so we worked with Prizme who was able to collage our pictures together and create that sort of look really authentically. Who chose the models and what unites their aesthetic? M: I chose the models. Detto and Kosuke were street cast and shot by me while I was in Tokyo. I just think they look great. Detto is really amazing looking - you don’t see a face like that very often. He looks hard, but he's very beautiful too. We shot Dan for i-D before, he's a really cool guy, who is really laid back and doesn’t complain when I put him in clothes he doesn't like! I've also shot Sid before. Callum was a model I'd wanted to shoot for a long time and here was a good opportunity. They all have a certain toughness, but at the same time have something feminine and precious about themselves, I quite like that. Also they're all tiny so they can fit into women’s samples as well! E: We both like Dan Felton and Yasmina, their attitudes come across well and they understand what we are trying to do, so we have used them quite a lot. You shot on lots of pavements and run down, holey-looking streets with the odd wheelie bin - where was this? M: It’s a mix of Hoxton Street and Shinjuku in Tokyo - all of the street photography pictures are mine, Ellen was kind enough to mix both of our pictures together for this shoot. I don’t think Ellen could bear to have something like a wheelie bin in her work; her work is very pure. Do you prefer shooting/styling with boys or girls? E: I prefer to shoot girls. I only shoot boys with Matthew - he fills in all the gaps in regards to my outlook on male fashion. M: I prefer boys. I like to dress them how I would dress myself if money was no object! Ellen, your shots always have an ethereal, otherworldly feel to them, often like pin hole images, are the blotches and scrapes dark room accidents or deliberate? E: I just go with the flow darkroom wise. I like to embrace the chaotic factors. Matthew, what's the future of menswear? M: I think London is becoming a place for really interesting menswear at the moment now that they've introduced the menswear day at LFW. So many designers are really pushing things there - people like Katie Eary, Christopher Shannon and James Long. Also I like that menswear is becoming more diverse in terms of models; Givenchy blows my mind every season! Both the clothes and the casting, I hope that this carries on. Text Sarah Raphael