Katron

Most of the work I show is women's fashion. This is the exception and I wanted to make it count. Katron is represented by West Model Management Japan, and he has the kind of quiet intensity that menswear editorial lives on — no performance, no overselling. You light him carefully, you stay out of the way, and the frames make themselves.

The session split across two setups. The studio work was a blank cyclorama, controlled lighting, and a wardrobe built around tailoring — black blazer, white shirt, tie, denim shorts. The absurdity of the blazer-and-shorts combination is the point. Menswear is a conversation with the rules of menswear, and the best of it is always a little off.

We then moved to a brick alley and a bank of concrete blocks on the edge of a St. Louis industrial site. The same wardrobe, different light. The point of the location move was to stress-test the styling — does the blazer still read when the background is rusted metal and broken concrete? It does.

The series is deliberately shown in both color and black and white. Menswear editorial often leans on color restraint anyway, and the black and white conversions are doing the heavy lifting on tonal range. The walking-away silhouette at the end is the frame that made me want to put this project forward. It says everything the rest of the editorial is saying, quieter.