ART DIRECTION

When I read Pieter Mulier’s advice in the latest Self Service magazine, it got me thinking about how much we expect ourselves to know at the beginning. Mulier, the Belgian designer who previously led Alaïa and is now chief creative officer of Versace, spoke about the pressure to “speak immediately” and position yourself. I recognised that feeling. You want to enter the industry with something to say, and somehow that becomes the expectation that you should already know exactly who you are.

There is something slightly contradictory about wanting to look like a woman who seems completely uninterested in what anyone thinks of her. You recognise her. She has her own taste, a life beyond the photograph, somewhere else to be. She looks comfortable being seen, without appearing to need it. And somehow, through a collection of campaigns, portraits and references, you begin to feel that dressing like her might bring you closer to that feeling yourself.

AnnouncementHope you’re all having a wonderful weekend. It’s the end of summer holidays and I’m feeling a renewed energy to bring many ideas to life. First of all, I’ve been working relentlessly on the comeback of Art Direction School. Starting with a completely new program called ‘The Recognisable Brand Method’ a.k.a. art direction for small businnes/ start-ups and sub-brands.

For a long time I called myself exclusively an art director, and the word came with a rule I never questioned. An art director directs and comes up with ideas, but the actual craft should be left for the experts. Someone else holds the camera, someone else styles, someone else makes the thing.

When I work with a larger brand, the onboarding usually includes a direction guide meant to last three to five years. It sets the vision every campaign is supposed to hold to. With one brand I received 3 of these in the span of 1.5 years, can you believe it? Each was send described as the long view, and each was replaced the moment it stopped matching what people wanted in that exact moment. I’ve stopped considering that as a failure of planning, it’s the actual condition of the job.

Chloe FW26 by Inez & Vinoodh Hi everyone, Today I wanted to share a bit of a motivational post that I felt inspired to write after reading the book ‘the Magic of Thinking Big’ by David Schwartz. I definitely recommend this book for anyone who is looking to expand their mind; it’s one of the best books I’ve read.

Orabella, Bella Hadid’s perfume Perfume is likely the hardest product to market, because it’s the one produce an image truly cannot see. You can’t photograph a smell, you can’t put the essence of the product in a carousel, billboard or 30-second hero film. And yet, fragrance is one of the biggest and most image-led business in all of fashion. It’s sold almost entirely through pictures of things (or in modern age through social content) that have nothing to do with how the bottle actually smells.

I was listening to an interview with the set designer Shona Heath on the podcast ‘What’s Contemporary Now’ (really recommend this!), who has built some of the strangest and most beautiful worlds in fashion, first across twenty years alongside Tim Walker and more somewhat recently as one of the two designers behind the film Poor Things, which won her an Oscar.

Before we jump into the topic of today’s essay: I’ve been featured on several places in the last two weeks and wanted to share it. First, I got the honour to do my very first podcast interview with Arielle Thomas from Process the Podcast, here I cover everything from my career trajectory to my methods and vision for the future. I also got to research the beauty industry for Notes by Merit and wrote a piece about getting ready for real life.

Vogue, April 2026 by Sebastian Faena I read a lot, sometimes not the entire book. When it bores me I abandon it and start a new one, but there are certain books that really expanded my ways of thinking. For example, Ways of Seeing, On Photography and The Creative Act are those books just like for everyone but I deliberately didn’t include them in this list since everyone already knows. All three are brilliant.