Willy Vanderperre's Take on Youth Voices, Isolation, and Pop Culture

Renowned photographer of the Antwerp Six, Willy Vanderperre is a Belgian-born image-maker best known for his campaigns for Prada, Dior, and Jil Sander, as well as publications like i-D, Another, or W. Longstanding creative collaborations with fashion icons like Raf Simons, Olivier Rizzo, and Peter Philips have informed his creative output over the decades and renewed his lasting interest in what youth cultures have to continually offer the older generations. 

Vanderperre has made himself an industry staple over the past twenty-plus years through his illustrious photography, which includes his project Naked Heartland and a book series that cleverly connects analog publishing to the new forms of media consumption. But his experience doesn’t make him feel old. In fact, he continues to tap in—in his life and in the contemporary conversation—into the energy that youthful voices bring to fashion in a creative and lifelong practice that mirrors how he approaches long-term industry collaborations and pervades his images: with a sense of renewal, expression, and movement. 

Episode Highlights:

• “A rather difficult place to be”: Growing up gay in Belgium to a hardworking family (and a father who was a butcher), Vanderperre felt the “smallness of the country” and says he was saved by art school and the sensitive people he came into contact with there. 
• Aspirational: Because of his upbringing, Vanderperre quickly found a drive to escape his origins. 
• An introverted country: Vanderperre sees Belgium’s history and small geography as drivers of the country’s production of artists and designers. 
• Looking differently at a garment: Vanderperre’s photographic work stands out among fashion images because of his preoccupation with and sensibility for capturing movement. 
• Normalcy: While a big-city feeling feeds a feeling of glamor, Vanderperre celebrates a sense of rootedness in his origins and having peers outside of the fashion realm, a situation of social solitude that he likens to COVID quarantining. 
• Contemporary publishing: Translating ephemeral social media into the “analog product” of a book, Vanderperre put his book together quickly, almost instantly, much like an Instagram post. 
• “The right thing to do”: His book on Instagram was driven by his love of youth culture—its accessibility, efficiency, and unpretentiousness.
• Vanderperre’s obsessions with youth, isolation, and the redemptive power of pop culture can be summed up by how impressed he is by outspoken young people disconnected and connected by expressive forms like music and movies in the internet age. 
• Never growing up: Vanderperre is one of the first modern generations to see themselves as having a different aging and cultural trajectory from their parents, and more able to choose whether they wanted to become “adults.” 
• Contemporary politics: Youth have positively shaped the world, particularly in the past five years, but Vanderperre has partnered with the Trevor Project to support LGBTQ+ rights.
• Long-term relationships: Close collaborations with Raf Simons, Olivier Rizzo, and Peter Philips have been challenging, presenting opportunities for growth. 
• Fluidity: While the industry has changed in the past 20 or 30 years, it doesn’t feel all that different to Vanderperre; he approaches it with new energy and different emotions and enjoys the influx of new voices.
• What’s contemporary now: “This conversation.”  

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