What Fashion Photography Loses with AI
A conversation with Archivings founder Shahan Assadourian, who spent years rescuing rare fashion photographs from long-lost magazines.
- Written by: Amanda Breeze
- Images/Photos Courtesy Of: Shahan Assadourian, Hugo Labrecque
On a wintry afternoon in Montreal, Shahan Assadourian sits in his studio surrounded by shelves of runway catalogs stacked alongside aging magazines, loose ephemera, and objects that feel curated yet serendipitous. This is the physical counterpart to Archivings, best known as archivings.stacks, the Instagram account that has made Assadourian one of fashion’s trusted custodians of runway photography.
Before the account became a reference point, Assadourian was just a kid from a small town in Ontario, newly arrived in Toronto, where he spent most of his time in used bookstores. While most secondhand shops favored novels over periodicals, places like ABC Books offered something different: fashion magazines and old runway catalogs that were likely only intended for industry use. His first purchase was a magazine feature on Tokyo Fashion Week Fall 1999, which marked the beginning of everything that would grow into Archivings. The designers across each spread were largely undocumented online, their work nearly impossible to find. By the early 2010s, Assadourian began scanning these pages at libraries and uploading them to Tumblr, driven by a desire to make the content accessible to anyone interested. “I was really proud to share the things I found with my online community,” he says, “but also show there was a way to educate yourself on things that didn’t involve an institution.”
Archivings began as a personal outlet and evolved into an integral resource. People would reach out for information on specific collections and designers that were hard to track down; Assadourian would dig through his archives and share the best he could find. “There was this emotional attachment… where I was the person holding a big secret that no one knew about,” Assadourian says. He wasn’t hoarding knowledge so much as curating its release. “The raw data and images I was finding were so cool, people had to see them. The gates were always open.”
Over time, Assadourian became as interested in how images tell stories as in collecting them. As archiving tools became ubiquitous, his research era became the springboard for what came next: projects that move deliberately out of the feed and into physical space, paying homage to the images he has revered for years. One of his recent projects was built around life-size cutouts derived from past runways, including Junya Watanabe’s Fall 2000 and Miguel Adrover’s Spring 2004 shows. The gesture is simple but loaded, returning images to bodies, scale, and friction. “When you think of any runway show, every single item is somewhere out there. The puzzle is just separated. There might never be a time when all these clothes are fully together again. But it’s cool to think maybe I could reunite them in some way,” he says. “I have a lot of romanticism about it all.”
For Assadourian, every scan, catalog, and overlooked page was a step toward something larger, a way to bring fashion’s past into the present, which has only grown more essential in the age of generative AI. Now, he’s exploring what comes after accumulation, bringing the work into spaces you can touch and inhabit: “Fashion is like an action movie; you just have to keep going. You can’t always stop and see that you did a great job until after the fact. It’s just one of these things where you’re continuing and always moving on to the next thing.”
Amanda Breeze
Shahan Assadourian
What made you start collecting and scanning fashion imagery in the first place?
I always had an interest in fashion, but didn’t know what I wanted to do with it. I just knew I loved the visuals, glamor, and mystique that this world was creating. The very first catalog I bought was a feature on Tokyo Fashion Week from Fall 1999, and I was really impressed with what I saw in there. I started researching the brands featured in this catalog and realized there was literally no information about them online. That’s when I started scanning pages at libraries. I wanted to make them available for everyone. I was a Tumblr kid, and really wanted to offer something interesting to my small audience that had similar interests to me.
And that’s when Archivings started.
Yeah. I started cataloging the scans I’d make of all these different designers, and that’s when I made Archivings. I posted every day. It felt like I was a custodian of these magazines, making them available to people. Over time, Archivings grew into a resource for people outside of my community who would reach out for information, and I’d try my best to find magazines that had what they were looking for. I kind of stumbled into being a researcher. I just loved cracking open a new magazine and seeing what was in there.
So you were mainly interested in the 1990s and 2000s?
That’s what was mostly available to me at the time. I was interested in earlier eras, but it was less likely to find proper documentation for them, especially since there were way less being made. I like every decade really, but the ‘90s resonated with me most because I was one year old and there’s something cute about it existing at the same time as me. Almost like I was waiting to grow up so I could enjoy it and see what happened at that time.
Is Archivings still a hobby or more of a practice?
It’s always been part of my life. I ebb and flow with the intensity of how much I put into it. In the last few years, I’ve been doing less scanning, and that’s because I found that the practice of Archivings was not just for the people, but also a personal education. It was my research era, and at one point, I started thinking about how I wanted to transition all this knowledge into work that might be looked at in 20 years in the same way that I look at what I’m interested in and have reverence for. For the longest time, I believed that everything that was meant to be made had already been made, and it was my job to sort through the pile like a scavenger. But all the research helped navigate what I wanted to do next, which was bring imagery to real life. I would never really say that I moved on because some of the impulses I have fall under the umbrella of my Archivings brain. Like the project I did where I made life-size cutouts of Junya Watanabe Fall 2000 and Miguel Adrover 2004 runway looks. The work still pays homage to the images I’ve been obsessed with over the years. I’m trying to do something that’s in between.
When you revisit the earliest things you digitized, what do you see? Is it an early version of your taste, or something that you’re still into now?
At times, I’d tell myself that it couldn’t always be about my taste. Objectively, I should have scanned every page since it wasn’t up to me to decide what would resonate with people. But there were times where my ADHD brain was like, “okay, I’m skipping to page 62, and I’ll do all the other stuff later.” Ultimately, everything was important to document because it just didn’t exist online. I was oscillating between doing a 100% completionist run of the magazine scan or picking and choosing to show my taste. If I look back, I think more about how I could’ve made a scan look better with a nicer DPI or have a nicer crop.
Runways, clothes, and the physicality of magazines were never really meant to exist online. What’s the appeal of working with something printed, bound, and a little fragile?
There’s something so cool about holding one of these runway catalogs because they weren’t really meant for the common person. These publications were industry tools for people who couldn’t travel to shows, and helped inform what they should buy into or what would be relevant that season. It really feels like something that’s more behind the scenes. Of course, physicality is awesome, and as someone who grew up on the internet, the IRL meet-up is always the biggest deal. The internet is great, but it’s also kind of a reminder of what’s missing in your life. But you know, the romanticism of something missing is nice too, and it’ll always be part of everyone’s life. It’s just amazing to have something pulled out of the 2D and put into the 3D.
People keep predicting a print renaissance. From your vantage point, does that feel like a genuine shift or just nostalgia with better branding?
It’s hard to say. I mean, if that’s the case, that’s awesome. But I do think it’s crazy how expensive magazines have gotten. If there’s a renaissance in magazine printing and more money is being invested into printing more copies, I would imagine it would end up being cheaper, right? I see a lot of magazines that have a hardcover or so many pages, and I’m like…it’s just a book. I like magazines that are flimsy and almost a little damaged. But you know, if people are going to spend $30 to $40 on a magazine, they’re going to treat it like a coffee table book.
AI is reshaping how images are created and shared. Do you think this changes how we value physical archives today?
As an image maker, I don’t appreciate that being taken away. I’m someone who likes to know who the team was behind an image and what skills they brought to the table. I don’t know if that’s common with many people who consume media, but I’m interested in the mosaic of people behind the work, and AI doesn’t have that. I think it’s more beautiful to see people’s journey with creativity. It’s also really exciting to flip through a magazine and discover a photographer for the first time, and sometimes not being able to find any information about them online. It’s super cool and mysterious. I wonder what they ate for lunch on set or what the vibe was behind the scenes. AI is sad because, in a way, it’s so sophisticated, yet it’s dulled real life for people. Honestly, even as someone who is trying to resist this sort of content, there’s this sort of cynicism that’s creeping up in me, and it definitely makes things less fun.
There’s also the issue of images being repurposed or recontextualized without permission. Has that happened to your scans, and how did you navigate that?
I had an IP tracker during my Tumblr days because everyone at the time felt like celebrities, stylists, and designers were following our accounts, and there was this sort of attitude about them taking something away from us without us knowing. It was difficult for me to understand how to feel because my intention was literally to open the gates and share with people, but that also meant it could land in the hands of someone who has the means to find it themselves. It was sort of this chaotic space filled with people from so many different places, so there were times when I felt cheated, and times when I felt good about it. Now, I’m very neutral. It isn’t my place to have an opinion about it sometimes because I’m just stating facts by scanning something and putting it online. It’s my labor, yes, but it’s not my personal work. That’s ultimately where I’m at with it now.
When you choose to share something, what guides that decision?
What I admire most in people is those who do something that is quintessentially them. There are people that I don’t personally admire on a taste level, but that are doing their own thing, and I really think that’s more important than making a product I want to buy. When I started, not many people were doing this, and I’m sure it came across as weird to many, so I think it was a brave thing for me to share things I thought were good enough to share. What I’m trying to show is that bravery pays off. Maybe it doesn’t in the moment, maybe it’s something that’ll only be appreciated in 20 years, and I think the idea of that is beautiful. The seed is planted, you just might not see it grow for a while. Think of TikTok, sometimes niche music from the ‘80s will resurface and go viral. I think it’s really cool that it ends up having a moment.
I’m curious to know what your process looks like. Are you hunting for specific pieces or following more of an instinctive thread?
If I think it’s mysterious, I want it. Like if I stumble on a magazine that I’ve never heard of before. But I also made this declaration of being done with my research era, and so I’m investing more into creating things, because it’s something that’ll pay off a lot more for me now. I look back at stuff a lot and appreciate things I maybe didn’t think much of before. But yeah, I’m focusing a little less on the fashion element of an image and more on the composition, or a person in a crowd who’s doing something weird while everyone else looks serious. The profile picture for Archivings on Instagram is a guy at a show just leaning over, and it looks like he’s in love with whatever he’s seeing, and that’s essentially how I feel. I’m drawn to the fact that there’s a big meetup of people to watch a show, and everything that comes with it, like the music, venue, security, and staff, yet the whole thing lasts only about 15 minutes. And it’s all upheld by the audience, the clothing, and the models.
Do you have a favorite scan?
I don’t really have favorites or a hierarchy with things because something might resonate with me now, but might not later. The type of thing I do like is if there’s a rare back view of a really cool look, since we often only see front-facing views in catalogs, or even something unexpected like zooming into someone in a crowd. I like finding little surprises within an image. I have Doc Pile, which is an Archivings side project where I gather a bunch of images that didn’t have any credit or things that are a little more on the experimental side.
Amanda Breeze is the lead writer at SSENSE. Her work has appeared in Schön!, METAL, and SICKY.
- Written by: Amanda Breeze
- Images/Photos Courtesy Of: Shahan Assadourian, Hugo Labrecque
- Date: January 9, 2026
