A Thin Line Between Fashion Look Books, Editorials, And Fashion Campaigns

For the longest time, I have asked myself what type of photography I want to pursue and what kind of photography helps me express my ideas. Apart from contemporary and fine art, I often find myself inspired and drawn to creative fashion campaigns, primarily look books and editorial magazine covers. Of course, these two close-to-each other genres represent both my interest in fashion design and the art of creating images. But how do we distinguish between fashion look books, editorial magazine images and fashion campaigns?

When I started photography, I kind of had an idea that I wanted to be in the fashion space and document fashion in the most authentic way possible even though I still questioned what type of image creations I want to dive into. Every image that I saw or referenced were, without my knowledge, fashion look books and in my head I always thought they were editorial images or fashion campaigns that you would find in magazines. Until I did my research on fashion photography in my third year, as my personal project explores a thin line between fashion look books and fashion campaigns. Throughout my research, I found that:

‘Traditionally, editorial photography means the images that accompany an article in a publication, editorial images can also exist on their own and imply a narrative or outline a creative concept. Professional photographer Amanda Lopez mentioned that “What distinguishes it from advertising is that there’s an element of storytelling to it,”. Additionally , it is different from an unstaged photo of a football game or political rally because editorial images require more planning and preparation’ (Adobe, n.d.).

‘Fashion lookbooks and photography campaigns differ from editorial photography in that they are focused on the overall style and look of an ensemble and representation of a brand. Shoots are often both on location and in-studio and focused on seasonal collections. Images need to be of higher quality and will typically be used as header images on websites introducing a collection and focusing on the overall aesthetic more than the details’ (Vanas, n.d.).

Looking at the images above, one would definitely ask themselves whether both of these images are a look book or a creative fashion campaign. Essentially, I find that look books can easily be creative fashion campaigns in a sense that they embrace a similar approach and serve the same purpose: which is to showcase seasonal collections of a fashion brand.