ASOS - FRANCESCA ALLEN

Personally, I think it's really important not to forget the foundations of our success. Fashion and Photography are both extremely competitive industries. When you combine them, you're effectively doubling the pressure. As a young Fashion Photographer and student, I find it incredibly inspiring to know that people like me are managing to tap their way into the industry through hard work and confidence.

ASOS is a fashion idea hub for myself and many university students. We use it to fuel our styling concepts and to occasionally (when we have money to spare) SHOP! Whilst on one of my connecting sprees I decided to check out some of their collaborative projects. Francesca Allen is a young newly discovered Fashion Photographer. Her work for ASOS' recent campaign featuring Stormzy is evidence that age does not matter when it comes to talent and ambition.

Allen described the location of the shoot as a "blue palace" in Kensington, London. Photographing such an urban personality such as Stormzy in such a polished and basic environment proved to be interesting visually and conceptually to Allen. Her comment on the aesthetics was "...it was nice to take him out of that (urban) context and make a really new image that we haven't seen before of him."

I was so impressed with Francesca Allen's attitude towards being a young artist in such a competitive field. Many often think that the Photography industry is heavily male dominated. This could perhaps put women off of pursuing the career path. However, Allen has firmly made her mark. The most inspiring words I've heard from her were "a thousand people are doing exactly what you're doing right now but those people are going to give up, and you're not."