When getting off the bus across the road from Dazed’s Central London HQ, you couldn’t miss them. Plastered across the posterboard outside creative hub 180 The Strand – also home to IMG Models, TikTok, Frieze, and British fashion stars Ahluwalia, Samuel Ross, and Standing Ground’s studios – in the late days of 2023 were the covers of Dazed’s autumn/winter ‘Baddie’ issue.

At first shiny and full of colour, as the weeks wore on and the notoriously shit London weather, and more specifically, the endless rain washed them out, their corners beginning to peel off and fade, until there was just one remaining. Like a fallen angel watching over passersby on the busy street outside, enormous wings affixed to her back, was angelic baddie and rising supermodel Ponahalo Mojapelo.

The standout cover was captured by frequent Dazed collaborator Kristin-Lee Moolman and styled by Zara Mirkin, and featured a swathe of innovative AW23 pieces from Nike’s legendary Jordan line – among them, its relaxed ‘Diamond’ shorts, its impactive ‘Wings’ jacket, and a pumped-up puffer jacket finished with Jordan’s signature ‘Jumpman’ logo branding. Joining Mojapelo on the shoot were a whole cast of heavenly creatures: namely, the next big things on the runway – a new era of supermodel baddies. 

With Dazed and Nike sharing similar values – from the off, Dazed’s approach has been ‘Making it up as we go along’, while Nike’s mantra is, of course, ‘Just do it’ – the link-up feels like a symbiotic one, with the behemoth sportswear brand giving Moolman and Mirkin free reign when it came to the creative behind the shoot. Both brands are also champions when it comes to uplifting fresh and rising talent.

But what goes on behind the scenes? With that in mind, and in a bid to open the doors to a historially exclusive industry, we decided to unpack exactly how a shoot like the Nike Jordan ‘Baddie’ cover comes together – from initial stages to final fruition – to equip a fresh wave of fashion creatives with some baseline knowledge as they try to get their foot in the door. Read an enlightening conversation with Dazed junior fashion assistant Andra Amelia Buhai below.

“The beginning part of a shoot is really a lot of research. Once you’ve set the creative and you have your vision and what you want it to look like, the research starts – from fashion, to clothes, to moods, to colour palettes, to locations. Most of the things you probably already have in your mind, but it’s a constant evolving process – some things will change, some things will stay the same.”

“When it comes to knowing what to call in, it depends where the creative is coming from and what you want to create with those images and the characters you have in mind. Sometimes you have to be really specific, like you really need that one look you requested because that’s a big part of making the shoot work. Ultimately you’re creating a story and you’re trying to show the audience your vision and the characters you have dreamt up. The way I do it is a lot of trawling through Vogue Runway through the season’s collections until I have a long list of what I want and go from there.”

“Finding the right model is all about the character and what the story is. Sometimes you will have references for the look on your moodboard, but then when casting it’s not about the physical look, it’s about the look in their eyes. You have to see something that speaks to you and the characters you imagine” – Andra Amelia Buhai

“When you’ve got your research together, your team confirmed, and a list of all the clothes you want to call in, the logistical stuff starts. “All the emails start going out to the PR teams asking for samples, the negotiations begin – they might not have the pieces you want, so will offer alternatives,” says Buhai. “And then there’s the nightmare of coordinating deliveries from all over the world with very short turnaround times. A garment might be on a Dazed shoot one day, and a shoot for Vogue in a completely different country the next. It’s every stylist and stylist assistant’s nightmare getting all the packages moving. And then there’s the times you have to hand-carry pieces when shooting abroad.” 

“Finding the right model is all about the character and what the story is. Sometimes you will have references for the look on your moodboard, but then when casting it’s not about the physical look, it’s about the look in their eyes. You have to see something that speaks to you and the characters you imagine.”

“Knowing when you’ve got the look or the shot is a feeling. It’s really hard to describe. In terms of the look, the fitting feels like exam day. You’ve done all your revision and research, and all you can think when you walk in is ‘I’ve forgotten everything’. But as soon as you go through the rack, it all kind of comes together, and without even thinking about it too much, your brain starts to make sense of what you’ve been thinking about this whole time. It’s the same on set when looking at the image – it’s a feeling, an instinct. It feels right, and exactly how I imagined and how the photographer imagined.”

Shop Nike Jordan here.

The story behind Marie and Lucie is as sweet as the portraits found beneath its cover. The collaborative project of photographer Patrick Bienert and stylist Ewa Kluczenko, it captures sisters Marie and Lucie Cornil wearing clothes once stocked in their grandmother’s Aix-en-Provence boutique, Geneviève G. Housing a curation of cult brands like Alaïa, Ann Demeulemeester, Issey Miyake and Comme des Garçons, it was run alongside their mother Christine until the shop shuttered its doors in 1999. Some pieces were scattered across the family, while the rest were packed into boxes in the attic of their parent’s home in rural Roussillon, France, only dusted off and opened two decades later for the making of this book. “This attic is really a magic place,” Kluczenko tells AnOther.

The stylist first learned of the sisters’ archive by chance, though it’s not the first time she has explored the subject of family and the sentimental histories of clothes. She met Marie at a dinner in Marseille just after the stylist had finished a project in her home country of Poland, which captured her own sister in pieces from their mother’s fastidiously collected wardrobe. The pair instantly connected over their parallel stories and, with Marie’s blessing, Kluczenko reached out to Bienert about creating a special project about the Cornils. “I was really fascinated by them and the history of the store, which existed for so many years,” says Kluczenko. “I really wanted to make a documentation of it.”

Marie and Lucie opened the doors to their enchanting family home in the French countryside for the book. Built by their grandfather on a hill surrounded by fields, it’s not only the location of the forgotten archive, but also the site of many happy summers, Christmases and gatherings through the generations. Staying overnight on two separate trips in the spring and autumn of last year, the photographer and stylist recall being plunged into the convivial heart of the Cornils’ family life. “Everyone was cooking together and it was like a really good atmosphere,” says Bienart, whose previous books Happy Springs and East End of Europe have more closely resembled documentary work, observing youth and overlooked communities in places like Ukraine. “Their mother was there as well and they had such a beautiful family togetherness. It was great to see how they treat each other. We had an incredible time and I think that also made the pictures very intimate.”

This intimacy is a specific kind – one that’s hard to describe and harder yet to capture on camera, though Bienart does so with sensitivity and skill. Looking at the portraits of Marie and Lucie going for walks, chatting around the dining room table and curling up in big armchairs, a particular sense of ease that you can only really slip into around family – or better still, your sister – is felt in every frame. “I’m into honest pictures and natural things happening,” the photographer says. “They were also really open and there was a lot of trust. In the end, it’s a picture of this closeness which you can only have if you know someone or if they let you in their space. I think that was great about it.”

Styling-wise, it was also important to Kluczenko to keep things authentic. “I didn’t want to make it too fashiony but this is also their identity,” she says of the organic looks, which mix archival pieces from Geneviève G already in the sisters’ wardrobes with treasures discovered in the attic. “When you meet them, they are always wearing a piece of Jean Paul Gaultier or Alaïa or a beautiful Comme des Garçons dress. It’s really something which is part of their lives. I really wanted to keep it as a sort of heritage [feel] that you can pass from one generation to another while connecting them as well.”

A product of collaboration in every sense, the resulting images were thoughtfully edited by Florine Bonaventure into a limited run of 500 books. Though the project was sparked by a desire to document Geneviève’s forgotten archive (she’s now in her nineties and, happily, has seen the book), for Kluczenko and Bienert, the finished product is really about family love and the special relationship shared between sisters. “The bonds between people, what links them and the transmission from one generation to another is something really important to me,” the stylist says. “I think sisterhood in general is really beautiful and interesting,” Bienert adds. “The older I get, the more I experience that family is the most important thing in life. Really, there’s nothing above it.”

Marie and Lucie by Patrick Bienert and Ewa Kluczenko is self-published, and is out now.