Men’s Paris Fashion Week

From casting diaries to the runway, photographer Jean-Luc Dupont goes behind the scenes, and gets up close and personal with the models, designers, and tastemakers of Men’s Fashion Week in Paris, France.

For the Band of Outsiders collection presentation, model Brendan Ruck was locked in a small gallery compartment for 60 hours, “day and night,” where he ate, exercised, painted, read, played guitar and, most importantly, turned the tables on members of the press and buyers by taking Polaroid pictures of them through the gallery’s compartment window.

Knowing Bernhard Willhelm personally, I had the very rare privilege and exclusivity to attend and shoot the fittings the day before the presentation of his collection. Before trying on the outfit they had been assigned, all the models were individually photographed and their printed portraits were individually “preserved” in big glass jars.

The idea to start my casting call diaries came suddenly last June when I kept bumping into male models in the metro or in the streets as they were going the castings for Paris men’s fashion week. At that time, I was getting tired of my photography job and needed new excitement. I was a model myself (ages ago!) and I thought it could be fun and interesting to follow the guys and document their professional life. It immediately became obvious to me that in order to get a more complete vision I also had to start shooting them during fittings, backstage, and on the runway, and that was the beginning of my ‘behind the scenes’

Part of the fun of any fashion week, whether it’s in Paris, New York City or Milan, is catching a glimpse of the amazing street style fashion. Models and editors are dressed to impress while they make their way from show to show, making sure to leave their “fashion mark” on the streets as much as the runway.