NYLON - February 2008 - (Page 30) contributors roberta rid o lfi Photographer Roberta Ridolfi was born in Rome and has lived in London since 1999. “I was very young then,” she says, “I always loved London and the music scene.” Having shot for Teen Vogue, Preen, Baby Baby Baby, and Rolling Stone, Ridolfi was the superstar photographer NYLON called in for our biggest shoot ever (page 124). “It was very different from person to person,” she says. “Some, like Alexa [Chung], were easy because they were used to it, while some designers or artists were very nervous.” Her most memorable moment was shooting Girlcore in the street. “It was a bunch of crazy girls. A black cab came by and they all sat on it,” Ridolfi recalls. “The driver seemed to enjoy it.” j akob brond u m Stylist Jakob Brondum lives in London, “in the dodgy outskirts of the East, surrounded by crazy people, creative misfits, and criminals,” so he was well-suited to style the more than 60 people who showed up for our “Uncommon People” shoot (page 124). After studying fashion design at Central Saint Martins, Brondum assisted at Dazed & Confused, and has since worked for Wig, Interview, Vision, and Bon. Of all the characters he met on the day of the NYLON shoot, Brondum remembers a few particulary well. “This one girl started out with saying, ‘My agent told me to not wear anything crazy!’ and ended up in this amazing outfit, just brilliant! It was a Ziggy Stardust leotard.” The biggest challenge of such a hectic day, Brondum says, was remembering all the names. “You just want to kill yourself when you ask the wrong band, ‘Are you the Klaxons?’” el l a al exa n d e r, ma r g a r e t c r o w, p o p p y c o r b y- tu e c h , a n d s a s h a r a s h o f Students at London’s University of the Arts, Ella Alexander, Margaret Crow, Sasha Rashof, and Poppy Corby-Tuech were indispensible during our “Uncommon People” shoot (page 124), assisting stylists and editors, and basically just helping to keep everyone happy. We hope they had fun, and it seemed like they did. Tuech says the most memorable moment for her was “watching Tom and Rhys from the Horrors scarfing macaroni cheese and pastries and wondering how they fit into the smallest jeans I’ve ever seen.” Crow, who assisted Jakob Brondum remembers: “Girlcore wreaking havoc on the wardrobe room all eight of them shrieking, trying on huge yellow feather dresses, Giles Deacon, and bin bag skirts. We had no choice but to stand back and admit defeat.” Alexander says her favorite part of living in London is “the way it feels like lots of villages all huddled together and the way you can find such different people in every part.” cl are dw ye r h o g g London-based writer Clare Dwyer Hogg has a bit of insight about her city’s neighborhoods. “Londoners have a very funny thing about whether you live north or south of the river,” she says. “They pretend to be territorial. I’m Irish, so I don’t count.” Dwyer Hogg has written for The Observer Magazine, Intelligent Life, is an associate editor at The Independent Sunday magazine, and also covers shopping for BBC London radio. She says she writes about “things I find interesting! Child trafficking in China; an artist who was traveling from London to Scotland in a trolley; politics in Northern Ireland; why I love Bob Dylan ” For this issue, she interviewed Ashley Walters (page 110), and says “He had heart. He meant what he was saying: It wasn’t a façade for the interview, and that’s so rare.” chri ssi e ab b o tt “At the risk of sounding pikey, my favorite indulgence is cider,” laughs London-based illustrator Chrissie Abbott. After growing up in leafy Twickenham, Abbott moved to the not-so-leafy neighborhood of Elephant and Castle to study illustration. Having worked for high-profile British brands including Virgin and Orange, Abbott is currently painting murals—“it’s fun as it gets me out of my studio” she says—and put down her paintbrush to illustrate this month’s colorful Counter Culture (page 84). “I collaged together various landmarks to create an alternative London skyline. I put the Queen in there too because I like her.” When not working, Abbott loves to trawl charity shops [second-hand shops], buy new coloring pens, and skip about the city, albeit carefully. “I’m especially clumsy,” she says, “so I tend to fall over a lot.”
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