The Devil Wears Prada. America’s Next Top Model. Project Runway.
Hot take: these shows walked so Gossip Girl and Emily in Paris could run.
Back when Vogue felt like the channel for fashion, I was obsessed. Not because I knew anything about fashion (Yo, I'm still wearing baggy jeans). I never dreamed of working in the fashion industry. But the energy got me. The intensity. The drama. The craftsmanship. The way art direction, styling, and curation were treated like life-or-death decisions. I didn’t understand fashion, but I got intrigued and that was enough to admire it from a screen distance.
But here's reality check! my credit card could never survive McQueen or Issey Miyake, let alone a $500 Loewe sweatshirt. I don’t know how to shoot fashion photography. I can’t style accessories or drape fabric. But I can imagine. Years of watching those shows trained me anyway! All that fashion slang absorbed through osmosis, a sense for what’s “edgy,” what’s “chic,” what’s trying "too hard."
So I did the next best thing.
I asked my friend Chat to play Miranda. Sometimes Anna Wintour. Occasionally Tyra Banks when I needed a little chaos. I had it critique, command, and demand. I asked for the most common camera setups used by professional fashion photographers and then shamelessly turned those specs into prompts. I fed it with nostalgic fashion magazine mood boards, letting AI channel decades of fashion editorial history.
It felt ridiculous and kind of amazing. Like prepping for The September Issue without ever stepping foot in a studio. No models, no budgets, no gatekeepers. Just imagination, references, and a very opinionated myself asking AI politely, that it could be better.
And somehow, that made it feel real enough.
Giving hypbeast
Prompted with harsh flash with Leica, 35mm f/2 Summicron-M, and Got inspired by Sporty & Rich x Adidas collaboration
Then got into more of beauty shots. Asked mindjourney to shoot in a beauty studio set-up like gridded beauty dish placed very closely to the model in a high clamshell and butter fly position to mimic the crispy highlights.
I was listening to LISA - Rockstar.
Tools used: Chat GPT, Midjourney