Finalists – Prix Picto de la Mode 2025 : Théophile Parat

Through his series “Fashion Polarama”, Théophile Parat paints a sensitive portrait of those who work behind the scenes during fashion shoots. Technicians, stylists, makeup artists—often invisible figures—are brought into the spotlight. Théophile Parat takes an experimental and artisanal approach to photography. By repurposing analog techniques—especially the transfer of Polaroid emulsion onto glass—he creates unique, fragile, and non-reproducible images. Somewhere between tribute and critique, his work offers a poetic counterpoint to the fashion world, inviting a reinterpretation of the collective creation of images.

Born in 1995, the artistic practice of Théophile Parat began through an act of desertion. After earning a master’s degree in economics in 2018, the shift towards art gradually imposed itself as an obvious path. In this breach, into which he fully threw himself after the lockdown, the passing years have brought intensity and depth to his journey. He funds his practice independently through work as a lighting assistant for fashion photographers, continuously gathering inspiration and alternative methods by attending workshops and evening classes, notably those offered by the City of Paris and by photographic artists.

In line with his values, and in opposition to the fashion industry from which he derives his livelihood, his curiosity has led him towards experimental, physical, plastic, and artisanal forms of photography. Serendipity and the sense of wonder it inspires are, to him, essential elements of his creative process. In this respect, analog photography stands as a near-constant pillar of his various creative approaches. Instant processes and their manipulations, printmaking, the use of expired consumables, and digital interpretation are among the means he favors to shape his identity as an “artist-craftsman.”

Over the past six years, through his experiments and exhibitions, he has developed a visual grammar where technique is closely intertwined with the narrative of his subjects. His photographs aim to singularize them by breathing into them a sort of imagined life.
He finds it exhilarating to mold the material of reality, to divert it and distort perception — as much to suggest as to amaze — within both documentary and conceptual approaches.

“Fashion Polarama” was born from the need to showcase those who, like Théophile Parat, remain behind the screens, the cameras, the racks, the flashes, the sets, or the models during photoshoots. His aim is to create, on his own scale, an inventory of these individuals encountered throughout the shoots, as well as the professions that work in service of fashion and its image, often without receiving credit.

His approach is also driven by the need to distance himself from this ambivalent universe — at once dazzling, volatile, and consumerist — which provides both resources and inspiration for his artistic work, while increasingly evoking in him a sense of dependence and a feeling of “a certain escape.”

Developing a visual archive of this microcosm, highlighting the participants rather than their collective creations through montages of polaroids emulsified onto glass, allows him to express this tension between admiration and critique. On one hand, he acknowledges the world he is part of, through portraits and a few “scenes” from shoots; on the other, he challenges it by creating outside any productive or commercial logic, practicing a human-scale photographic craftsmanship that moves away from instantaneity, slowly producing unique, fragile, and non-reproducible images.

It is an approach inspired by fine art photography, one that embraces wonder and invites a reinterpretation of reality.

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