I came to fashion in my mid-twenties, after leaving the dance world and starting again in PR. One of the first things I did was pitch myself to a small accessories company with an idea to introduce the brand to a new group of beauty creators. Wanting to understand how the industry actually worked, I moved into the showroom at Exposure PR, where I met an editor from POP magazine. I began assisting her and realised, almost immediately, that styling was the job I had been looking for. What followed was less glamorous and far more useful. I interned across Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Stylist, InStyle and Red, then spent years working as a freelance fashion assistant for magazines and established stylists in both the UK and the US. I wanted to earn my place in fashion rather than arrive at the title before I understood the work, so I learnt it from the ground up.

My years in dance left me unusually attentive to the body in clothes, to movement, proportion and what happens to a look once someone has to actually inhabit it. I am equally interested in what clothes say socially, how they place someone within a culture, a class, a subculture, a fantasy or a particular moment in time. I am currently studying Art Direction at Kingston University, which has pushed me to think beyond the clothes and more about how an image is constructed as a whole. I want to become involved earlier in that process, at the point where the idea is still being formed, rather than arriving once its visual language has already been decided. Styling will remain central to the way I work, but I am interested in extending that thinking into art direction and moving image, where I can have greater authorship over the world the clothes exist inside.

Studio@amiimcintosh.com

Instagram