With a background in applied arts and textile design, Georgia Pendlebury has harnessed the potential of sensory through style. The stylist-creative director found her career as a means of stretching beyond the limitations of sculpting, satisfying her desire to explore the dimensions of clothing through color, fabrics, and textures. This creative instinct has afforded her the luxury of intimate collaborations with designers, photographers, and musical artists alike. On the cusp of a year contributing to the aesthetic universe of FKA twigs, Pendlebury has channeled her creativity into music videos like Perfect Stranger and Eusexua, styling covers for Dazed, Re-Edition, and Novembre Magazine, and lending her talents to the lookbooks and runways of Jean Paul Gaultier, The Attico, Y/Project, and KNWLS.
Coinciding with her work on the KNWLS Spring/Summer 25 collection, she released the fifth installment of MUD – a fashion photography publication helmed by herself and photographer Arnaud Lajeunie. Set in Soulac-sur-mer, a resort town nearly 100 kilometers from Bordeaux, France, Lajeunie and Pendlebury document the lives of four complete strangers, who are tasked with living together for one week in a cabin. What eventually ensues is a visual documentation of girlhood, and moreover an exploration of play and friendship. Models.com contributor Nia Shumake spoke with the stylist-creative director on conceptualizing MUD 5, her process working with KNWLS, and the future of print media.
What made you transition from studying art to becoming a stylist?
I studied art, the history of art, and design generally (applied arts, textile design). I fantasized about myself as an artist. I started making sculptures coming out of school, but after some time it felt like a rigid exercise. I was looking for something that would make me touch much more ground. I was missing textiles, a variety of textures, and mostly images. I gave styling a chance and somehow within this frame, I could touch every subject that interested me. In my mind, there was never a clash or a change of subject, it felt more like an evolution. I have the same relationship with objects of design, art, and fashion. Of course, the medium isn’t the same, but what always mattered to me were images, colors, fabrics, textures, dimensions, and shapes. You appreciate a coat with the same gut feeling as a glass-blown vase.
How does your background in art shape your editorial choices?
My approach always starts with an idea, which is a very design-oriented habit. The concept is the root. Although the idea doesn’t come out of nowhere, I always first respond to the work of the photographer, it’s what animates me.
I believe this is why my work isn’t visually linear. The photographers I work with have pretty varied aesthetics. I like how it allows me to feel radically different at the start of every editorial or project we decide to shoot together. Then I see shapes, the shapes being fashion, and what is needed to echo or contrast what we are aiming to shoot.
Much of your work leans into the abstract, particularly apparent in your work with FKA twigs — what informs your approach in styling innovatively?
I’m very thankful you see this in my work, and obviously it’s not a conscious choice. I believe that every subject influences me differently. FKA twigs comes with her own world, she has a weight if you see what I mean. She allows everything and attracts certain textures and volumes for me. It’s always about contrast – her body, skin, beauty – they require a kind of toughness back, a sense of radicality. It goes the same way with editorials or other artists I work for. The photography and concept behind a story calls for its own original fashion direction.
What have been your favorite looks with her and could you describe your process behind them?
What I love about working with her are the extreme wild steps she is able to take. She is the queen of MUD, and can speak to her crowd, wear the craziest leather pieces, metallic heels, and still look effortlessly majestic. On the other hand, she can still carry her own identity in commercial and polished context.
You work intimately with KNWLS and a shortlist of London’s rising sect — how is that distinct from your styling for publications?
Indeed, I have worked with Charlotte and Alex, the designers behind KNWLS, for years now. I have an enormous respect for their talent. They’re by far some of the best designers I know, for their craft, skills, sensibility and attention to detail. The way I work with them illustrates how I love working the most, and what I’d like to lean more and more into. I’m alongside them in various fields, and I consult on the collection design as much as I can – from prints, color and fabric choices to collection building. I help them to build their image, social visual content, and identity. Being present as deeply as this for a brand really fulfills me. Shooting images for magazines is great, shooting music videos, dressing pop stars is incredible, but being useful and constructing something with longevity really wins it all for me.
When approaching a mega styling project, what is the first part of your process?
The reality is that any project being mega or less mega always comes with…emergency! It’s a constant last-minute challenging exercise, and we partly are little soldiers to make anything happen. So, I always need to think very fast creatively but also truly practically, to build the right team, research at night, make requests during the day. I also never go for the easy thing. It’s partly my fault :)
What sparked the initial concept for MUD and how does MUD 5 differ from the other installments?
MUD is its own parenthesis. We (Georgia and Arnaud Lajeunie) wanted to make images outside of the usual frame, outside of the commissioned work, and outside of the editorials. We also wanted to be freed from the pressure of time and performance. It started very genuinely one summer. We rented a house for four days in Burgundy, France; I cast three girls, girls who really inspired us. I borrowed some pieces from the archives of a designer’s friend, and we shot 60 images without any specific plan. We decided to print it as a soft-cover book and called it MUD. MUD became an exercise we promised ourselves to repeat every summer.
How important is collaboration with you, and what has it been like to work with Arnaud Lajeunie?
I am taking the risk of sounding cheesy, but collaboration is everything to me. Photographers inspire and carry me. I usually propose concepts, and they bounce back with their interpretation. It evolves and merges from there until the shoot happens. We are really in it “together.” I’m as happy to talk about lighting as I’m happy to talk about looks and beauty. I met Arnaud when we both were very young, we grew up together. We were also in a relationship for years and I believe that has, for best or worst, really created a strong bond between us. Saying that, I have overall a very close relationship with most of the talents I work with. I love what they do, they animate me.
You told AnOther that MUD was conceptualized to develop fashion photography outside of the usual framework. At the time, what framework did you believe oversaturated the industry?
We wanted to make images without the limiting timeframes of a one-day shoot, 12 pages, and a long list of advertising credits to place. We don’t consider MUD at all like fashion photography, it is photography simply. Fashion does have an implication in it, as I dress them, but I see it more like an ingredient than a focus. On top of that, for every issue, I work with either a collector or a brand and dive into archives. There are zero recent pieces or anything contemporary. Some pieces are extremely valuable for fashion history, and some pieces cost 2 euros from the market.
What have you learned about fashion media as a producer since then?
Every magazine has its own challenges. Print is really in a tough place at the moment, and brands are overpowering magazines. The requests brands have for editorial placements seem to me often out of place, and of course, it lands on styling freedom. We’ve lost a little space here. Yet, I also respond well to a commercial challenge, and it pushes boundaries and creativity.
With the publication highlighting friendship and freedom, what is the collaborative process like with your models?
It’s a really fascinating process; the day before each MUD shoot, we have no idea if it will go well. We have cast the girls separately, and we are always a little anxious to know if they will get along. We all live, eat, and sleep in the same house for four days without knowing each other, and the quality of the images relies so much on their relationship! I’m proud to say it has always been a success. The girls have instantly loved each other, and sometimes became friends. This recipe is definitely the reason why MUD looks honest. The context is artificial (Arnaud and myself creating it) yet the actions and their relationships is real. On another hand, it’s also definitely a human challenge for us. We’re not just trying to make images, we are also taking care of them. It adds a weight to the experience. Arnaud and I hold our breath for 4 days, usually don’t speak to each other for two weeks after the shoot and regroup months after, realizing how happy we are with what has come out of it. We then only start to edit and test things out. You were asking what made MUD different. It’s probably the human aspect. The fact that we are not fully controlling its course, that we can’t follow our mood boards and shot lists…it can’t go as planned (like an editorial usually does or tries to). Our muses GIVE and surprise us, and I thank them for that. Not directing a shoot transforms the photographic exercise deeply.
What are your hopes for MUD as a publication?
I hope MUD creates emotions. I hope it will transform as we personally evolve and stays alive as a collection. I hope we can have a space on shelves of people and that the MUD collection can grow for a few years.
Where do you see the state of print media in the next few years?
I have high hopes for print. I think after diving into a virtual endless state of the world, people are in need of physicality and emotions. We need to stop comparing ourselves to the past and grab something that can’t exist anymore. Things have transformed. We now need to think in multiple directions, and I personally am very interested in what virtual allows us, and new technologies. I’ve never been opposed to both, and as the deeply romantic person that I am, I do believe in the power of physical impact.
