Wilkosz & Way Blog: November 2011

We've been doing these inspiration posts for a bit now, and while they usually focus on photographers who we admire, we wanted to branch out and feature other creatives usually involved in fashion photography.

Olivier Rizzo (b. 1969) is a Belgian stylist, consultant and freelance fashion editor who we've been following for a while. We've mentioned his before in our previous post about Willy Vanderperre, a Belgian photographer he collaborates with on most of his work.

He is one of the best fashion stylist working today, and his collaborations with some of our favourite photographers can bee seen in some of the best fashion images of the last decade. His layers, tucks, combination of contrasting pieces elevate everything.

Olivier Rizzo is represented by Intrepid.

Willy Vanderperre on his long running collaboration with Olivier Rizzo:
"I met Olivier on the first day at school in Antwerp. So it really is a long-time collaboration. We’ve been friends ever since. Right after graduation we just started to team up together. It would be Saturdays, Sundays… mostly on weekends that we would get together for a shoot.

He was styling. I was taking pictures. Peter Phillips, who was at the Academy with us, was make-up. We shot outside on location, we shot in our living room, always natural daylight, very raw, it was all about the emotion we tried to capture in the expressions of the models. The living room where we worked from, had the perfect light-orientation and Belgium has the most beautiful diffused light. We just did things that we wanted to express to the world. It was raw and emotional. I guess it was that search for real emotions, that people picked up on.

We’ve known each other for such a long time, we trust each other, but we also push each other every time again and again. We don’t want to fall into repetition. I think we always strive for something that pushes our work forward, or that gives people a different look on how we work together. I think we always try to do something unexpected in terms of imagery or in terms of styling, that comes with friendship and trust and I hope we can continue working together forever because he is a very talented person."

Willy Vanderperre, Raf Simons and Olivier have been creating the beautiful Jil Sander campaigns season after season.

Jil Sander - photo: Willy Vanderperre

Jil Sander F/W '08 - photo: Willy Vanderperre

Jil Sander F/W '11 - photo: Willy Vanderperre

Jil Sander S/S '11 - photo: Willy Vanderperre

Did you ever think that the work you were doing on the weekend would ever have a commercial application?
"At that point, none whatsoever. We all were very naive back then. We just shot! We always worked around the same boy and girl in a shoot because they were a source of inspiration. Those images were also the start of the link with Raf Simons. Raf was a close friend of ours and he was just starting his collection. He was translating perfectly what happened around that time with his clothes that we used a lot. One of those early images went into an exhibition and Terry Jones from i-D magazine picked up on it. And that’s when the first picture got published.

Ever since then we did shoots and we worked together and then I just always took the liberty of sending it to i-D magazine saying “This is what we’ve done. Do you like it? Perhaps you’d like to publish it” and I’d always be fortunate enough that they liked it (laughs) and it just continued.

Also Alix Browne who used to work for V magazine was in Antwerp to see about some advertising for V Magazine, the start of it, the launch of it. V Zero saw the publication of some images we had produced, our first publication in the US.

They commissioned, we proposed. There was never a thought that if it continued in that direction it was going to become a commercial success or anything. We just did things and sent them out. We just had fun. Later, at one point you start to think about the commercial application of your work."

- excerpt form Models.com

V Magazine 0 issue 1999 - photo: Willy Vanderperre

Olivier on the V Magazine #O shoot:
"This image and the others that went with it were taken the same afternoon in our flat in January 1999. Raf [Simons] did that amazing collection with the big, black capes. We shot it about a week after the show. It was very relaxed really, we were just hanging around, not really planning a concept, not like a regular shoot, we just wanted to see where it would go. I felt it was quite nice to have pieces of the collection with Robbie's own clothing. Then at a certain point I thought about Mickey Mouse, I don't know why I thought about it. Personally, I'm very much into old Mickey Mouse images from the Forties and Fifties and have quite a collection of them on T-shirts.

At a certain point it was getting very doomy but still very romantic, I thought about putting one of my mouse T-shirts with one of Raf's pieces. Then Peter Philips said he wanted us to wait around while he tried something. Twenty minutes later he came back with Robbie and that amazing make-up was on his face. At that point he was just wearing some vintage black jeans - my favourite staple that I still use in a lot of shoots - and one of Raf's dinner-jackets. That look just stands for what I really like in men's fashion; a young, handsome man who is quite sure of his presence, a simple stance, a beautiful daylight picture, an amazing tailored dinner-jacket with his own vintage sweatshirt and tight jeans. And the weird thing is, the whole lot blends together with the strange, children's cartoon on his face."

- excerpt from Independent, The (London), Sep 20, 2003

Some editorials that we love, all shot by Willy Vanderperre.