Just Loomis - Fine Art Photography Gallery

Notes on FASHION

In the late 1980s, Just Loomis was an art school graduate with his eye on the fashion world. With a group of friends, he moved to Milan, where he photographed runway shows and followed his favorite Italian models about town as they lived their lives to the hilt. The exuberant young women, with their open laughter and graceful gesticulations, were so intriguing to Loomis that he stayed in Milan for four years.

"I was reacting against a lot of studio photography going on at the time," he says. "I gravitated towards the fresh and joyful rather than the constructed and artificial." Loomis also had an eye for classic beauty, for moments that seem to have sprung—along with the models' pearl chokers, up-dos, strapless gowns and brick-red lips—from Fellini's influential film, La Dolce Vita. With a nod to this filmic inspiration, Loomis chose to portray an anachronistically openhearted fashion community, where young people rejoiced in their beauty and the sweet life it afforded them.