November 28, 2014 |
In honour of Mr. Moore’s forthcoming recognition at the British Fashion Awards- a flashback to our autumn/winter 14 issue, where Alexander Fury had a proper sit down and natter with the man himself:
I’m incredibly jealous of Chris Moore. I’m incredibly jealous because I’m a fashion obsessive, the sort of person who genuinely thinks a Saturday night is well spent hunched over a laptop crying at old John Galliano shows – the ones that got away, the shows I never got to see, and will never get to see, except pixelated on a 12in screen. Watch Galliano’s spring 1995 show, and you’ll see Linda Evangelista’s vast, Lurpak-yellow, tulle ballgown smoosh a bird-like, grey-haired man perched at the very apex of the first catwalk turn. That man is Chris Moore.
“I can’t say I remember having my face brushed by Linda’s frock,” says he today. But Moore was there for all those Galliano shows. He was also there for Karl Lagerfeld’s first Chanel show in 1983, for Christian Lacroix’s own-label haute couture debut in 1987 (“Lacroix – he was a hot number!”), for actual salon presentations by Cristobal Balenciaga.
Moore has seen more fashion than perhaps any other individual working in the world of fashion today – womenswear, menswear and haute couture alike. He’s still working today, covering the four fashion capitals with an inquisitive and ever-interested eye. For years, that eye was the eye – Moore being the go-to photographer of choice for reams of Fleet Street’s finest for years. He turns 80 this year. And despite his own best intentions, he’s still at the helm of almost every catwalk.
ALEXANDER FURY: “Can you remember when your interest in photography began?”
CHRIS MOORE: “As a child I was always sort of interested in photography. When I was about 12 or 11, my sister had a Leica and she was taking photographs and developing films and I got really hooked on that. But having said that, I wanted to do art and sadly I failed the entrance exam, because I was absolutely hopeless at Maths and English. I think I’m probably a bit dyslexic – I can’t spell a word, so I find it very difficult to write. So photography, I find really wonderful.
“I basically got into it by accident. I’ve become a great believer in fate. There’s a wonderful thing that Suzy Menkes once said to me, about someone else – ‘I threw him the ball, and he didn’t run for it.’ In life, you have to sometimes run for the wrong ball, but basically take your opportunities. I went for a job when I was very young, 16 or 17, at a place just off Fleet Street. I was ushered in, not really knowing what I was doing. And I was shown into a photographic studio and that was it. I’d photograph still-life things, tins of biscuits, and also learned how to copy – we used to use glass plates, plate cameras.”
ALEXANDER FURY: “I wondered if you were shooting, or if it was purely technical”
CHRIS MOORE: “I do think that learning to print is terribly important if you’re a photographer. I used to copy photographs and, as I say, do simple still-lives. I was there for two or three years. Terry Donovan was also there at the same time I was. He left before me and went straight up into the sky! I then moved to Vogue studios. I was offered this job – again, pure fate – to be an assistant. That was really wonderful. I imagine it was like being at art school, and I really loved it.”
ALEXANDER FURY: “Was there an interest in fashion before that?”
CHRIS MOORE: “I’ll have to be honest – no. Because when I was at Vogue studios, people would ask, ‘Oh, so you’re interested in fashion?’ And I would answer, ‘I don’t know.’ But I think that grew; the interest in fashion did rub off on me.”
ALEXANDER FURY: “Did you shoot for Vogue as well? I know that you did editorial work.”
CHRIS MOORE: “Not for Vogue. The one thing they did tell you when you went to become an assistant was, ‘Don’t imagine you’re ever going to become a Vogue photographer!’ So no, I didn’t. But I’ve had pictures published in Vogue since then.”
ALEXANDER FURY: “Did you find the environment at Vogue very different from working on Fleet Street?”
CHRIS MOORE: “Totally different. Different kettle of fish. I assisted Cecil Beaton and Henry Clarke – I had a wonderful trip with Henry Clarke, we went to Sicily. That was an eye-opener for this rather provincial, uneducated assistant! It was with Fiona Campbell-Walter, who later became Baroness Thyssen, I think, and Elsa Martinelli, who became a film star. And she taught me how to eat spaghetti. I’ll always be thankful to her.”
ALEXANDER FURY: “I think fashion editorial was a very different beast then from what it has since become”
CHRIS MOORE: “I remember I assisted Henry Clarke on a shoot with Suzy Parker, and I remember Henry Clarke was there doing Suzy Parker’s hair. Models mostly did their own make-up. There weren’t any stylists. They didn’t exist.”
ALEXANDER FURY: “It would seem that trajectory was leading you into editorial. How did you move to reportage?”
CHRIS MOORE: “Well, I got married. And Vogue didn’t pay enough money, so I had to do something about that. I got a job at a photographic agency, Camera Press. The job I had was taking not really fashion photographs, but pictures with models. They were the sort of pictures that Woman’s Own would use for problem pages, which was fun, and I knew what I wanted to do was take photographs. But they wanted me to sign a two-year contract, and I was 21 and I no. So he said, ‘Well, do you want to leave this week or next week?’ Which was a bit of a shock. Then he said he would loan me £100 to start on my own. Again, someone throws the ball, and you take it.”
“My first wife, who was a journalist, used to cover the couture in Paris. And after about four or five seasons she suggested that I should go. They didn’t have shows then – they would never allow any photographer into a show. But you could go after the show and they would have a number of garments that they would let you photograph. So that’s what I did.”
ALEXANDER FURY: “So it was, again, posing with a model?”
CHRIS MOORE: “Yes. I’d take them out on the street. The funny thing was, you’d have to pay the model a fee. It was the equivalent of about £4. I used to do a lot of work for Drapers Record; I also used to shoot for a magazine called British Milliner. I used to do something like 60 hats in four hours I’m a hack really, you have to understand.”
ALEXANDER FURY: “Me too, I think we all are really. But did it take a while for the catwalk industry to really build up?”
CHRIS MOORE: “It was the ready-to-wear. It was when Cacharel and people like that decided to put on shows – before then, it didn’t exist. That happened and we started to go to that. With that having been successful, the couture houses decided they would have to do it as well, otherwise they would lose out. They weren’t getting the press.”
ALEXANDER FURY: “Was it a very clean moment? Can you remember it moving to being more welcoming from an antagonistic feeling?”
CHRIS MOORE: “Oh there’s always been antagonism. Catwalk photographers are considered dogs, and are often treated as dogs. But at the same time, they want us there.”
ALEXANDER FURY: “I find it fascinating – especially when you go to shows when people are late and the photographers harangue them. They’re the boss. They’re the people whose livelihood it depends on.”
CHRIS MOORE: “It’s much, much easier now on the whole. Unless you don’t get an invitation for Balenciaga!”
ALEXANDER FURY: “That’s odd. I always assumed – as you often do with things you don’t really know – that it was easier for you guys. That people wanted you there.”
CHRIS MOORE: “Well, they do and they don’t. I can remember Valentino’s sidekick”
ALEXANDER FURY: “Giancarlo Giammetti?”
CHRIS MOORE: “That’s it. I can remember – this was when we were all down the side of the catwalk with the cameras – I remember him walking down and kicking the cameras. There was such an animal reaction from all the photographers it was absolutely incredible. I have never heard such a roar of displeasure. They wanted to tear this man apart. Now we have autofocus lenses – technology governs a lot of it. When we used to pop up and down at the side of the catwalks, we were always getting in the journalists’ way. They used to hate us. They were quite glad to get shot of us.”
ALEXANDER FURY: “That’s the thing, with the catwalk photographers generally, that you say and do what we all wish we could. When someone turns up massively late, everyone wants to scream at them. You’re almost the voice of the people.”
CHRIS MOORE: “They are a good bunch, they really, really are.“
ALEXANDER FURY: “And it’s a difficult job to do.”
CHRIS MOORE: “It’s not easy. I know I am getting. Actually, I’m not getting old, I am old. They all help me, they all look after me. It’s brilliant.”
ALEXANDER FURY: “There is a camaraderie there?”
CHRIS MOORE: “Yes, strong. Yes.”
ALEXANDER FURY: “When I first started to follow fashion – it was pre-internet – and you really relied on catwalk photographs in newspapers. It was the only way you could see fashion – your images of those shows. It was incredibly important.”
CHRIS MOORE: “The only thing I can say is, doing the shows, it gets in your blood. You have to do it. People keep saying, ‘It’s hard work’ It does get in your blood. In fact, I’m trying to get it out of my blood. I should really retire.”
ALEXANDER FURY: “Do you keep saying, ‘One more season’?”
CHRIS MOORE: “Two seasons, two seasons.”
ALEXANDER FURY: “People ask why I do menswear – because lots of people don’t.”
CHRIS MOORE: “Well I think it’s quite interesting. It’s good you do it.”
ALEXANDER FURY: “How did you start Catwalking.com?”
CHRIS MOORE: “That was Maxine’s brainchild [Maxine Millar, Moore’s partner]. She said we had to get onto the internet. We were one of the first. It’s all about speed now – we’re trying to keep the quality, as well as the speed.”
ALEXANDER FURY: “I called it reportage earlier ”
CHRIS MOORE: “Well, it is. I’d like you to say it was art, but ”
ALEXANDER FURY: “But I think it’s a very specific type of reportage. It’s not like documenting a football game. You’re documenting something that’s so unreal. And I can never see it from your perspective.”
CHRIS MOORE: “Well, you can come and do it with me. Rebecca Lowthorpe came and did that once.”
ALEXANDER FURY: “In that vein, do you think the shows you like are different from the ones we, as press, enjoy?”
CHRIS MOORE: “It does happen. I think, ‘Oh, that’s really great’, and you all disagree. I just love everything that Comme des Garçons does. I think she’s just terrific. I like Prada. And I loved Miu Miu. I love the music – I said to my son, ‘I’ve just discovered Depeche Mode!’”
ALEXANDER FURY: “[Laughter.]”
CHRIS MOORE: “Exactly the same reaction from him. I just loved the music.”
ALEXANDER FURY: “Is there something you think makes a great catwalk show?”
CHRIS MOORE: “A bit of drama, I suppose. I remember Issey Miyake in the past really made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Beautiful really. I do think that if you’re a designer, a show is like the final picture on the canvas – that’s how it is. I like a bit of poetry, a bit of art to a show. Then I feel that this is a designer. It’s not just a man making clothes, it’s something else.”
Photographer: Maria Ziegelboeck
By Alexander Fury
