Robbie Spencer

(The Coat, Photographs by Mario Sorrenti. Styling by Robbie Spencer. Modeled by Christian Brylle.)

Robbie Spencer is renowned in fashion circles as one of those stylists that don’t just think outside the box but turn the box inside out and completely distort it into something unrecognisable. Spencer was originally an art student at LCF who studied and completed a degree in fashion promotion, with a focus in journalism, but has recently been appointed fashion director at the influential youth culture magazine Dazed & Confused. Spencer started out as an intern at Dazed & Confused assisting formidable groups, including stylists Alister Mackie and Nicola Formichetti. He was gradually given more and more responsibility when Formichetti became fashion director of the magazine, given the chance to source clothes and experiment with the outrageous ideas he had. 

This is when Spencers ideas became a reality, he was now in the position to begin creating some of fashions most striking editorial imagery. From bugs and yarn to sticky food and butterflies Spencers initial aim is to inspire readers and try to educate or enlighten them to new ideas, his connections often come from outside of fashion, and he says that he loves to collaborate with people that are far removed from the fashion industry, he feels that this “brings a new perspective to a fashion shoot, and thats what transforms an image into something else and takes it to another dimension”  

(The Sweater & The White Shirt, Photographs by Mario Sorrenti. Styling by Robbie Spencer. Modeled by Christian Brylle.)

(It Came From The Sky, Artwork Maurizio Anzeri, Photography Richard Burbridge, Styling Robbie Spencer)

A shoot Spencer was involved in was the June 2011 Global Activism Special, it concentrated on the struggle for freedom around the world, featuring missing Chinese artist and social critic Ai Weiwei on the cover, and publishing one of his last interviews before he was detained by the government. The series that i found extremely captivating was the S/S11 collaboration between Robbie Spencer, photographer Richard Burbridge and artist Maurizio Anzeri. The series consists of black and white photographs styled by Spencer, taken by Burbridge and exploded into another dimension by Anzeri who is best known for his sequence of beautifully embroidered portraits made from photographs found in flea markets. The combined media gives the effect of a dimension where history and future converge. Anzeri’s delicately stitched veil recasts the figure with an uncomfortable modesty, overlaying a past generation’s cross-cultural anxieties with an allusion to our own.  Each of them are dressed accordingly in some form of knitwear bringing the images together as one. Although the series are aesthetically  pleasing, each image evokes a certain amount of personality or psychological ambition, the images imply that thoughts and feelings are exploding from their heads.