IN THE FOLD

London-based photographers Lola Paprocka and Pani Paul have been a couple for 13 years and have worked together, as Lola & Pani, for 10. The duo began collaborating with Homme Plissé Issey Miyake, the menswear line dedicated to the brand’s signature pleating, after their 2020 book, Studio Portraits, made it to Japan. It’s an ongoing process that builds on the visual language they have developed across documentary, portraiture and fashion photography to offer a series of idiosyncratic character studies in vivid color. 

Rosalind Jana: What do you enjoy about working with Homme Plissé Issey Miyake? 

Lola Paprocka: We don’t work with a stylist when we shoot Homme Plissé—we work with the pattern cutters, the designers of the actual clothes; they dress the models. The shape is so particular. 

RJ: Is there a quality you look for in the models you shoot? 

Pani Paul: In the beginning, we worked with people we’d photographed before for personal documentary projects. We put them in the first Homme Plissé campaign we showed in London and it has developed from there. It’s so instinctive—there’s a gut feeling where you just can relate to somebody, or their face resonates. 

LP: Lots of them are skaters or dancers or musicians or artists. That’s what is exciting: someone who has created themselves. 

RJ: Some clothes change people, while others draw out what’s already there. When you see your subjects in Issey Miyake, which way does it go? 

LP: I do feel that some people change when they wear it—there’s often this confident energy when they step on set. But also, some people are just performers. Even if they’ve never done it before—and very often it’s the first time they’ve been photographed—they transform in front of the camera. 

RJ: The documentary and the commercial can be two very separate arenas, but it seems that there’s a nice synthesis here. Do you feel a shared ethos with Issey Miyake? 

PP: We both have a massive respect for the medium, and craft in general. For our part, we photograph everything analog and then it’s all hand-printed in a darkroom. 

LP: There is no “fast” fashion with them. They take their time, they do amazing research into color, which is often rooted in nature. If the collection is inspired by stones in a specific space or country, for example, they go there, find the stones, and develop colors from that. It’s a very long process but it’s the best possible way to work. 

RJ: Is slowness a quality you’ve also prioritized in your work with Homme Plissé? 

PP: Because everything is photographed in such a similar way, the evolution of the project has been small and slow. There could be subtle differences in the color of the light on different days, which will reflect through the building you’re working in, or in the casting from different cities. But the fundamental building blocks of the project remain the same. It’s beautiful to see in the long term: You can have two images that look similar, but they’re shot five years apart. Knowing this gives it something special. 

“They take their time, they do amazing research into color… It’s a very long process but it’s the best possible way to work.”

RJ: The two of you have been collaborating for a decade. What does that look like practically?

LP: We both photograph on set and we have a system of what we focus on. We use different cameras and sometimes we switch, but we’ve developed an aesthetic that brings together what we did before we began collaborating. We sometimes travel and shoot separately, but it still goes under the same moniker because, by now, it’s our shared visual language. 

RJ: What do you admire most about each other’s way of working? 

LP: Pani is very creative and spontaneous. We can make mood boards, we can plan it all, but then there’s always something that happens naturally on the day. 

PP: I can get really hung up on small details—it can be something that’s not going to make a big difference in the final execution—and Lola will say, “We’ve definitely got it… let’s focus on something else.” She has a broader vision of how the day is unfolding.
 

This article is produced in partnership with Homme Plissé Issey Miyake.