A Thread about Cris Fragkou's photos
She's got an all-access pass to fashion week and has turned backstage photography into an art form
I always look forward to Cris Fragkou’s photos from fashion week. They feel less about the circus and more about the art, the emotion and the community of people behind the shows. Her images are a heady concoction of beautiful clothes, a tender eye and a fleeting snap of the lens.
Here, she chooses eight pictures from her archive and tells us more about her work. I hope you enjoy getting to know her.
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1 photo that reminds you of your childhood
This was my first editorial post-Covid, and our theme was Joy. Coming back to your childlike self, when fashion was just meant to be fun. Fucking around in clothes because it was another way to explore the many MILLION selves contained within you. We covered this girl’s face in stickers for the shoot. I remember doing this to myself as a kid and feeling invincible - like anyone could say anything mean and it would bounce off my skin.
1 photo that reminds you of your career
I’ve chosen an image that I feel represents the accumulation of my career, because I’m not even sure how to represent my career. A frantic gal in her 20s running around with a camera. Street style, then backstage, then editorials, then campaigns, a pandemic, and then BOOM. Explosion. The universe builds and then bursts over the city of my damn BIRTH (Athens) to result in me shooting for Dior at their Cruise show in May 2021. An ancient arena filled with all my past lives and the ghost of my mom hovering in the sky. A month later I’m shooting their lookbook in Paris. It was like watching myself on the Truman show or something.
1 photo that reminds you of a high
Simone Rocha. Every season without fail this show is a reminder of why we return to fashion. Frills, but with the opposite feeling to the connotations of frills. Toughness reflected through softness. The ultimate flow of self-expression. Forgiveness and sharpness. A perfect yin-yang.
She makes my heart feel like it’s creaming its pants. She is actively resuscitating dead fashion hearts on a regular basis.
1 photo that reminds you of a low
A lot of crying. In your feels. Is this a low? Define ‘low’. Sometimes the lowest lows are actually the highs. Trust Bode to get me to talking about the Great Paradoxes of the Universe.
This image is Bode AW23. Emily hadn’t shown for a while, at least not in Paris, and I’d missed her. There is a sentimentality and emotional vulnerability to her clothes that makes me feel like it’s Christmas. The show was in a theatre, with models walking at a slow pace, giving us a real show not just a runway. Her dad (or was it her grandfather?) gives a speech, talking about how he recently lost his wife and has since felt the greatest pain he has ever encountered in his existence, and that although it hurts, he turns to his daughters. He says he hopes they are lucky enough to feel such devastation in their lives, for this will mean they have truly felt love.
Well fuck. Me. Up. Imagine me in my feels over these silks and silhouettes, only for it to be explained and deepened as a message of love and universal paradox. I exited through the backstage to watch the rest of the show in a hallway with a TV so I could sob in private. I cried for weeks.
1 photo I’ll never forget
Mugler AW23. First seeing the collection backstage and then seeing it born onto the runway. The child is this fucking majestic, earth-shattering, gravity-defying performance of a show. I’m surprised I didn’t pass out. Sitting there watching these supermodels come down the runway, their hair blowing in the wind (the fan was held by this 18-year-old intern who I’m sure actually died multiple times whilst sitting there!) It was the ultimate display of sexy femininity. I felt like I’d been transported back to the 90s, watching a fashion movie where the theme was ‘fashion shows of the future’. I don’t plan on having kids, but if I did I think even my great grandkids would be born with this as a core memory.
1 photo that makes me feel a part of something
One time that I felt overwhelmed by a precise sense of the container in which fashion exists - and felt like I was 100% present and a part of said container - was at Virgil’s last Louis Vuitton show. The one right after he died, with Naomi in the white suit on the runway.
I’ve shot almost all of his shows, both LV and Off-White, been in every backstage, watching the build up of his ideas. I felt genuinely devastated at the loss of this person. At the show, there was a sense that we were witness to a painfully short, but beautiful and monumental period in fashion. A period that created life-changing shifts in our industry. I was aware that all of us were feeling the same weight, of the passing of time, of the loss of a soft, beautiful, caring genius, of the feeling of the unknown in this next chapter. I hope none of that sounds conceited, it’s just a feeling I’ll never forget. This photo is one of my all-time favourite photos ever taken, from one of Virgil’s earlier LV shows. It’s published in the Virgil Abloh LV book by Assouline!
1 photo that makes you feel empowered
In recent years I’ve struggled with imposter syndrome (how original! Lol.) and severely doubted my credibility. Not as a photographer, but as a creative. There is a difference. 52 flights a year and still barely seeing anything new can do that to you. Sometimes I have two hours to take six beautiful images, sometimes I have 20 minutes to take 40 images. You can imagine how it can suck you dry.
After eight weeks of fashion week, it was 2am and I was sitting on my couch in Paris editing, and I was in a BAD ass mood. So I booked a ticket to Senegal. Three weeks later I arrive on my own to Eat-Pray-Love, and hopefully, with a little luck, take a decent photo.
Forced out of my head and into a new space. New life everywhere I look. New smells, new colours, new flavours. Every damn sensation was new. I shot 18 rolls of film, and I’m incredibly happy with the results. The little fire in my belly is back. I'm gonna make a book (if I can stop procrastinating and doing puzzles).
1 photo I never expected to take
The Queen, on her way to Richard Quinn at London Fashion Week in 2018. There’s not much to explain here. I was standing down an alley away from the show to make a phone call. I turn around - et voilà! Queen Elizabeth elegantly alights from her carriage, with no one else around except me and her chauffeur. Fucking astounding.
You can find more of Cris’ work on Instagram and via her website.
Threads of the week
Stress testing more transeasonal outfits. This time I’m wearing some secondhand Atsuro Tayama salopette pants and a Fiona O’Neill mohair boob tube. The top makes me laugh because it’s so cute but really only wearable in these mixed-up months when it’s hot enough to wear a boob tube but cold enough to wear mohair. Sandals are Prada mens.
Loose Threads
Love Sinead O’Dwyer’s new campaign, starring season 3’s first guest, Alva Claire. Listen back to her episode here.
Not sure whether these are shoes, boots, compression socks or what, but they’re so sick. Don’t know much about tennis but I do know Serena always serves.
Dancing around to Tom Rasmussen’s new record. Incredibly chic album cover by photographer Tim Walker.
Lastly, my two cents on the Met Gala: was sad not to see anyone in something from this Chanel collection. The denim/ stars + stripes would have been the perfect Karl X Americana moment.
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