A couple of weeks ago I popped along to the Photographers' Gallery to catch When You're a Boy an exhibition showcasing some of the work of British menswear stylist Simon Foxton. Foxton's work as a stylist anticipated and defined key changes in fashion and style photography since the 1980s.
I was struck by how Foxton legitimised fashion photography and the role of the stylist, and how he used his work to ask important questions about the notion of masculinity in Britain, for example;
I love the conflicts at work in this piece (published in i-D magazine July 1991) - the apparent incongruity between a young black man in fairly banal surroundings, and his chic highly-tailored "Country Gent" look for me raises some really pertinent questions about ethnicity and national identity in Britiain, and, indeed what constitutes "Britishness"...
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