Francois Berthoud: Fashion, Fetish and Fantasies

Francois Berthoud is known for his painstakingly produced and meticulously arranged linocuts and his expressive drip paintings and elegant computer graphics have graced the face of countless magazines and advertising campaigns for the world s most discerning and sought-after fashion brands including Yves-St-Laurent, Bulgari, Chanel, Givenchy, Sonia Rykiel, and Prada. His work presents the conceptual aspect of fashion, maintaining a strict line between the edge of eroticism which he claims to be all important. Emerging as a leading fashion illustrator and art director in the 80s, Berthoud s distinct style was championed by the legendary Anna Piaggi early on in her avant-garde publication Vanity that was published by Conde Nast.

She hailed him by saying that while Francois illustrates fashion in an apparently formal and decorative way, in reality he analyses his subject in depth and with an elegant sense of detachment before recreating it in his atelier-laboratory . He experiences fashion with a sharp sense of irony and a visual culture rooted in conceptual art. But his style is totally now! Berthoud has a reputation for romantic fashion illustration and for erotica (he was the illustrator for Betony Vernon s The Boudoir Bible) and where the two often overlap.