Dramatic dark masks from Mathias Sterner are beautiful and intriguing

“I wanted the masks to appear as if they were sculpted around the model,” says photographer Mathias Sterner, explaining his approach to shooting fledgeling fashion label Nor Autonom’s inaugural collection. “I wanted the model and the mask to became one object.”

Nicolas Olivier Richard, a good friend of Sterner’s, set up Nor Autonom last year with stories in mind. Future collections will focus around traditional pieces – “clean” garments complete with “advanced” details – but the label’s first consists instead of hand-made metal masks. Titled Entity, the collection is meant to represent Richard’s desire to craft garments loaded with individual identity, and so it does.

“When I first saw them I became really excited,” Sterner says, who worked on the project with art directors Leon & Chris. "I knew immediately that we could do something really interesting – all of the masks have different identities, and such strong expressions.

“Nicolas wanted the images to look like godly figures,” Sterner continues, “and he also had the homogeneous look of a butoh dancer in mind. Instead of the dancer’s traditional all white, we went all black, adding a subtleness that became more dramatic.”

Art direction by Leon & Chris: www.leonochris.se