How Stylist George Krakowiak Uses Fashion to Foster Dialogue

Behind the Image is an ongoing MODELS.com series taking a more personal look at both established and emerging creative talent.

George Krakowiak, Stylist

Hometown/country: Londrina – PR, Brazil
Based: London, England
Representation: Streeters

How would you describe your work? What’s your trademark?
I would describe my work as intuitive and investigative. I studied social sciences prior to working with fashion, so my work is crafted with many different references and associations. I’m especially interested in approaching aspects related to personal and everyday particularities. After moving to London, these subjects were put in a different perspective, and it interested me even more. The first time I went back to Brazil to see my parents, I came across my mother fixing a broken object in a very creative way, making a gambiarra. This is a popular term used by Brazilians to express an action that solves a problem with very few resources but with a lot of creativity. It was from then on that I realized that my work was always connected to this very Brazilian way of creating, and actually, what I had been doing over the years was also a form of gambiarra. Often in fashion, we don’t have all the resources we’d like to have, but we need to make it happen, a very simple example would be a model in front of the camera looking perfect, but when we take a look at the behind the scenes her clothes are all clipped from the back — that’s a form of gambiarra. I had this growing desire to take this expression of my culture as a main character in my research and to perfect this technique to translate certain aspects and meanings of my work. It’s challenging to create with few resources, and I like that it puts my mind into a more intense and thought-provoking creative process.

How did you first discover your passion for styling, and what led you specifically into the world of styling?
This is a long story… I’ll start this answer from my college years because it makes more sense to me. As I mentioned before, I was a social science undergraduate and moved to São Paulo to further my studies in anthropology. At the time, I already knew that I didn’t want to be a teacher, I wanted to work in the investigative and research area. As it turned out, living in São Paulo is expensive, so my parents didn’t support me to go there and said, “If you want to go, you’ll have to manage on your own.” But making money as an academic is not easy, and at the time, I shared a house with a friend who worked in fashion; one day, we were talking, I was explaining my difficult financial situation, and asked him if he had any jobs I could do to earn some money. He told me, “if you want, you can come and work with me as my assistant, and I can pay you something per job.” At that age I saw fashion only from a historical perspective in the social sciences, so I thought that it would be interesting to have a closer look into this universe. What I didn’t realize was that it was to become my profession, haha, and that’s when it all began. After all, for me, it was a win-win situation. I would earn some money and, on the other hand, better understand another universe that was completely distant to me. The first day I went to set, I saw creatives working towards a very clear goal, which was to create an image that made sense to the collective there, and I began to find it intriguing. With my academic background, I began to link that with social aspects and understand that those people who were in that environment and moment – I don’t like the word determining, but in a certain way, they were guiding the fashion sense of the overall public who were to consume that image. It was then that I started to investigate these meanings and thought that it would be nice to be able to find bridges between fashion and what I had already been studying. After that and a few other experiences, I decided to do some shoots with creatives I knew from a similar process. Until a few magazines asked me to style for them, and that’s when I understood fashion as a tool for dialogue and a profession.

What other jobs have you had?
Before working in fashion, I was writing a thesis that related to Michel Foucault and the way to contest intuitive ideas accepted by the critical tradition of thought.

What inspires your creative process and influences your artistic vision?
Many overly common things inspire me, especially simple everyday things. I like to notice how sometimes things that we usually wouldn’t look at can make an overwhelming impression on us. The other day, I saw a discarded mattress on the street, laid out on the floor like a sculpture, and that really interested and inspired me.

You styled Bad Bunny for the Vogue Italia July 2024 Cover. How was that experience for you?
It was great, he is very open to possibilities and a sensitive person, so we were able to create interesting images.

What have you watched/heard/read lately that has inspired you?
Recently, I’ve been rewatching some of David Cronenberg’s films. Videodrome, in particular, has social reflections that are still very current, and to realize that it was the early 80s and he was already addressing topics such as technology and humanity in a way that is still very relevant leads me to think how harmful is this insistent and toxic relationship we as a society has with technology in general. It’s so important to connect with real things and with yourself instead of this infinity-scrolling loop we have going on.
Book: The creative act: A way of being by Rick Rubin
Music: Terra by Caetano Veloso.

What have been the biggest challenges you have faced professionally?
I believe that living is already a great challenge; therefore, professional challenges are also included in this package, I always tend to connect with myself and know that regardless of the challenge I’m facing, alternatives will exist, so it ends up being something cyclical and plural, I return what is given to me and so on.

What’s one thing outside of your work that you would like people to know about you?
I created a series of sculptures with recycled plastic. Although it has been a while, it was a project that I developed during the pandemic and is still very important to me.

Who do you think is one to watch?
These days, I have come across the work of a Brazilian artist/photographer, Melissa de Oliveira, who caught my attention. It is a very relevant and real documentary excerpt of Brazil.

Selected Work

Unpublished series, Brazil, 2018
This image has a special and particular meaning for me, it is part of my research on shapes and distinguishing the relationship between clothing and image. It is also the boiling point of an intense creative process of exchanges that I had and still have with Rafael Pavarotti. Through this process, I began to see my work in a more amplified scope, in the aesthetic sense. From this partnership we had in mid-2015 in Brazil, we began to reflect on different ways of creating images, starting from narratives that were not purely related to fashion, it was as if we were experimenting with elements present in our daily lives and creating from there.

Creatures of the night, June 2024
In this image, I pay tribute to the Brazilian artist Ney Matogrosso and to the cover of his album released during the military dictatorship in Brazil in the mid-70s. In his image, we see the band members with their heads served up as a banquet on a table full of food. It was loaded with underlying meanings of freedom and a critique of the regime at a time when we were experiencing censorship and total annulment of democracy in Brazil.

Luncheon Magazine #16 Fall/Winter 2023 Covers
This is a very special image to me, it was one of the first magazines I did in London. It wouldn’t be possible without the support of my dear friend, Roksanda Ilincic. Besides us being great work partners, she is one of my biggest supporters and introduced me to Frances Von Hofmannsthal who believed in our story and gave me total freedom to create. This is actually the first part of a personal research project on gambiarra, as the wine glasses are fixed with hair ties. It is interesting because it also relates to shapes and notions of the law of gravity and physics.

Luncheon Magazine Spring/Summer 2024 Covers
This image was shot in Amsterdam by Viviane Sassen, and what I like most about it is how it was captured. I have always admired Viviane’s work, so it was a great pleasure to share and discuss some ideas with her.

Maison Margiela F/W 2023 Campaign
This image holds an important meaning to me. It was the first big campaign I did in London, only a few months after I moved, and there I was at Maison Margiela in Paris with John Galliano and his adorable dogs, editing and fitting looks.