These portraits capture the unsung heroes of editorial fashion – assistants

Published by Exhibition Studio, Assistants by stylist Virginie Bennarroch and photographer Lola Raban is a photo series that started out as “a fascination for my assistant’s styling kit”, Virginie tells It’s Nice That. “It was so visually striking: necklaces of pins, clips, all these functional objects that felt incredibly aesthetic.” This simple, utilitarian beauty that Virginie found in the tools and accessories of her trade led the stylist to pitch the idea for an editorial shoot, one that would offer a behind the scenes look at the role of the assistant stylist. She reached out to a number of independent magazines she was working with, but nothing shook loose.

Then, quite by chance, early last year Virginie reconnected with Lola, a film-director and fashion photographer, and an old friend from her home town Nîmes, in the south of France, who was keen to collaborate on a series of portraits. It was around the same time that the independent magazine and publisher, Exhibition Studio, offered Virginie the opportunity to make a photobook. “Everything suddenly aligned and that’s when Lola and I jumped on the chance to create a book about assistants,” Virginie says.

At first, the pair thought they would capture styling assistants directly on set, with a fly on the wall approach, “but we quickly realised this would put the assistants in a difficult position,” Lola says. “A fashion shoot has a very clear hierarchy and it wouldn’t have allowed them to be themselves.” Instead, they set up some time for these portraits to unfold in a stripped back studio set up where people could come in as they are, unrehearsed and covered with all kinds of kit from their time on sets and shoots. The art direction for each shot was intentionally minimal, letting individual expression, outfits and smaller gestures piece together a story.

Assistants was first and foremost about capturing a candid observation of the things these unsung figures do for the fashion world day-to-day, documenting the quiet craft involved in styling that’s so often hidden behind the bravado of the final photoshoot. This comes through best in Lola’s detailed close ups of shoe covers, clips on tool belts and lifts stacked with suitcases of clothes. “For both of us, but especially for Virginie, it’s really about turning the focus to what’s around you, what’s really close,” says Lola. “We’re so used to running through every project, every shoot – it was pretty cathartic to give ourselves some time and space to observe and admire the people around us,” she shares.

When compiling all of Lola’s portraits into a book, the pair made made some deliberately minimal decisions around design. With a view of the photobook as more of a gallery than a design object, Virginie was keen for there not to be “any graphic performance”, so their approach to the form of the publication was simple and restrained, inspired by traditional Japanese books where “clarity and quietness allow the images to speak for themselves”, Virginie says.

For the stylist, a key part of the process was thinking about how the sequencing of the book could create meaning through rhythm, “allowing images to echo, contrast, or slow the viewer down”. Most importantly, Virginie and Lola wanted to give each portrait enough weight and space in the books pages: “Stylist’s assistants embody so many different roles: you need to be creative, you need to be crafty, and you need to be a producer all at once,” Lola ends. “I have a lot of admiration for them, I’m happy we got to show that in the book.”