Home Sweet Home: Tom Allen Refashions Fall Trends
Photo: Tom Allen
Focused on traditional forms of art (specifically sculpture), Tom Allen initially used his camera for documentary work. “When I began to understand it more, I found that the most artistic place to be in photography was fashion photography,” he told The Cut. “The fact that somebody wants to do something new and different all of the time generates a lot of creativity and change.” Over the past few years, his images have been featured in Muse, Numéro Tokyo, Industrie, Dazed & Confused, and i-D, but when The Cut approached him to participate in Out of the Box, Allen welcomed the opportunity to bring fashion photography back to just … photography. “With fashion photography, often the fashion becomes almost too important,” he explained. “You have to do hair and makeup, and everyone’s assistants are around — there’s a small army of people that come along with it. It takes you away from the happy accident, the spontaneity of photography … so this, was in a way, liberating.”
Before seeing the assortment of Suno and Rachel Comey sweaters, Theyskens’ Theory boots, and Tsumori Chisato pants, Allen had already decided on a backdrop: his home county of Cornwall, England. “My family has been there a long time,” he said. “I grew up there, both of my parents grew up there, and my grandparents grew up there … I know a lot about the place and I’m very much linked to it, but I’d actually never shot [clothes] there.” He asked British model Hannah Noble to come along, and the duo stopped by a farm-supply store ahead of their three-day-long tour to pick up “some bits and pieces, like socks and warm stuff.” Allen also brought a Barbour jacket from his family’s house and one of his grandfather’s hats, for Hannah to pair with the fall pieces. Click ahead to see (and read) more of the story behind Allen’s shoot.
Fashion market editing by Jenny Kang.
"The Cornish people don’t necessarily follow trends. They wear what they like, the way they like to wear it. When Hannah [the model] and I w...
"The Cornish people don’t necessarily follow trends. They wear what they like, the way they like to wear it. When Hannah [the model] and I were driving around, we often had to stop for food and so on. I think to start with, Hannah was slightly self-conscious about wearing some of these outfits into a café or wherever. The first couple of times, people came up and said nice things about what she was wearing and thought it looked cool, and that was that. It didn’t look odd to them. It seemed quite normal, I guess."
Brunello Cucinelli cashmere hat with fox fur pom, $825, available at Brunello Cucinelli (379 Bleecker St., 212-627-9202), worn over orange Rachel Comey hat, $135, available at asos.com. (Combination worn throughout.) Isabel Marant sweater, $395, available at Isabel Marant (469 Broome St., 212-219-2284). Altuzarra skirt, $960, available at barneys.com. Barbour jacket, available at barbour.com (worn throughout). Photo: Tom Allen
"The flowers are from some sand dunes on the coast. They caught me when I was walking by, because the sand dunes are desolate, and not much grows...
"The flowers are from some sand dunes on the coast. They caught me when I was walking by, because the sand dunes are desolate, and not much grows on them, but these flowers happened to be, which I thought was quite spectacular. It also gave a little brightness to what is most days either rainy or misty, and definitely cold."
Photo: Tom Allen
"This is adjacent to Bodmin Moor. There’s an old RAF base that was set up around the time of the war to service planes in Cornwall. It’s desolate...
"This is adjacent to Bodmin Moor. There’s an old RAF base that was set up around the time of the war to service planes in Cornwall. It’s desolate now ... actually, the grass is really cropped because it’s where the sheep graze.
The jacket is a Barbour jacket, which a lot of people wear mostly for farming and outdoor work. I nicked it from my parents’ house in Cornwall. And the hat is two hats — one over the other. They do these huge, very, very thick knit hats in Cornwall ... I like that it added a sense of comedy in a way."
Benson sweater, $175, available at amazon.uk. Confezioni Crosby shorts, $325, available at openingceremony.us. Photo: Tom Allen
"On one level, I saw all of this more in black and white, and the color more came organically. I've shot lots of landscapes of Cornwall, and quit...
"On one level, I saw all of this more in black and white, and the color more came organically. I've shot lots of landscapes of Cornwall, and quite a few are in black and white ... As I started shooting, the color started to win over, although some of the pictures stayed in black and white."
Photo: Tom Allen
"Going through the clothes, I wanted to find not only styles, but also textures that would link in with these landscapes."
3.1 Ph...
"Going through the clothes, I wanted to find not only styles, but also textures that would link in with these landscapes."
3.1 Phillip Lim cape, $750, available at 31philliplim.com. H&M pants, $59.95, available at H&M (640 Fifth Ave., 212-489-0390). Hat is photographer's own. Photo: Tom Allen
"I quite like this picture. Technically, it’s terrible — I think it’s even out of focus — but there’s something about it that just feel...
"I quite like this picture. Technically, it’s terrible — I think it’s even out of focus — but there’s something about it that just feels like it could have been a picture that I took with my schoolmates. The style of photography is very loose in that sense."
3.1 Phillip Lim cape, $750, available at 31philliplim.com. Hat is photgrapher's own. Photo: Tom Allen
"This is a reference to the Cornish farmers. These hats — I don't know what they’re called — but older farmers wear them, again with th...
"This is a reference to the Cornish farmers. These hats — I don't know what they’re called — but older farmers wear them, again with the Barbour jacket. This is one of my granddad’s old hats. He was a builder, so it’s kind of a tradesmen’s hat, if that makes sense. He’s passed away now, but he was a deeply patriotic Cornish man. He believed it was the best place in the world."
Louis Vuitton mohair knit dress, $1,970, available at louisvuitton.com. Hat is photographer's own. Photo: Tom Allen
"It wasn’t a concerted effort for me to make her smile or not smile. It's not that either of was having a bad time — it relates to the weath...
"It wasn’t a concerted effort for me to make her smile or not smile. It's not that either of was having a bad time — it relates to the weather, slightly. What I possibly might have done here is fallen into mud. Not, like, fallen down, but I probably slipped, which got a little chuckle out of her. I gave Hannah very little direction, to be honest, and that was one of the joys of working with her. She understood that these were more a series of portraits than some kind of high-fashion shoot, and we got these really beautiful pictures of her."
Rachel Comey sweater, $470, available at saksfifthavenue.com. Tsumori Chisato pants, $520, available at tsumorichisato.com. Burberry Prorsum owl detail T-shirt, $295, available at burberry.com. Photo: Tom Allen
"This is a place called Minions. The building behind her is an old mining stack where they’d have an engine that would pump air down to the miner...
"This is a place called Minions. The building behind her is an old mining stack where they’d have an engine that would pump air down to the miners and also ran a lift, which would get them out. The last mine shut, I think, back in the late eighties or early nineties.
For me, Hannah has a very strong stance and it comes back to that Cornwall is a tough place. It was classed as one of the poorest parts of the EU, because of the lack of jobs and in the area. The work used to be mining — that’s gone —but fishing, farming, and construction, those are hard jobs that breed a slightly tough person."
Joseph sweater, $695, available at Joseph (816 Madison Ave., 212-570-0077), worn under Confezioni Crosby raincoat, $450, available at openingceremony.us. Photo: Tom Allen
"This is in the foothills of Rough Tor ... there used to be these M25 parties in England — up in London, there’s an M25 road, and they’d run...
"This is in the foothills of Rough Tor ... there used to be these M25 parties in England — up in London, there’s an M25 road, and they’d run these kind of free parties on the outside of the M25. The idea of them gravitated to Cornwall and it was always a certain type of person who would go there, the kind of girl with a free spirit and her own sense of identity. The jumpsuit is probably the most direct reference to these raves. It did have a black hood, but I really liked this other fur hood. And again, it was that quirky element to these people that I was trying to bring out."
Boy. by Band of Outsiders jumpsuit, $795, available by request at sales@bandofoutsiders.com. Araks mink hood, $5,000, available at shop.araks.com. Theyskens' Theory boots (worn throughout), $465, at Theory.com. Photo: Tom Allen
"We took these high-fashion pieces and put them in this more depressing scenario, and I wanted it to be realistic that this girl would be wearing...
"We took these high-fashion pieces and put them in this more depressing scenario, and I wanted it to be realistic that this girl would be wearing these outfits. And I think that to have the same shoes and to change the outfits makes much more sense than every single outfit being completely different. It felt more like this girl in Cornwall happening to wear Alexander Wang, or Marc Jacobs, or whatever it might be."
Suno sweater, $396, available at sunony.com, worn under H&M cardigan, $59.95, available at H&M (640 Fifth Ave., 212-489-0390). Moschino Cheap and Chic pants, $735, available at Moschino (401 West 14th St., 212-243-8600). Photo: Tom Allen
"This landscape was a small outcrop of trees in Bodmin Moor. There are not a lot of trees up there, partly because of the weather. It’s a very ha...
"This landscape was a small outcrop of trees in Bodmin Moor. There are not a lot of trees up there, partly because of the weather. It’s a very harsh place ... I was kind of hoping it might be sunny."
Photo: Tom Allen
"Color and silhouette were both important. There was so much good fashion in the trunk that it was more about using it to say what I wanted to sa...
"Color and silhouette were both important. There was so much good fashion in the trunk that it was more about using it to say what I wanted to say about this Cornish girl ... I think as time went on, relating the color and the patterns to the landscapes became something that was important, as well. It was just a natural progression. There’s a picture of a tree on this sweater — it was quite funny — but I like that bauble on top of the hat. It shows how much wind was whipping along. Pretty much in every picture, the bauble was doing its own thing."
Suno sweater, $396, available at sunony.com, worn under H&M cardigan, $59.95, available at H&M (640 Fifth Ave., 212-489-0390). Photo: Tom Allen
"We spent a lot of time driving between the locations and I was very much talking to Hannah about them. In my head, I had a number of different t...
"We spent a lot of time driving between the locations and I was very much talking to Hannah about them. In my head, I had a number of different things I wanted to show and a vague picture of places I wanted to go, and each time I’d explain to her what the area was about."
Photo: Tom Allen
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