Bio for stylist Bernardo Siaotong, commissioned by Stockland Martel, 2009
As the fashion editor of Surface, a style magazine with an avant-garde sensibility, Bernardo Siaotong had to be a strong storyteller. Hair, clothes, models, and makeup were always the central characters, but he directed the plot. Although he has since left the magazine to devote himself to working as a stylist, his experiences as an editor have proved invaluable. “Working as a fashion editor definitely influenced my work as a stylist—being able to tell a story and knowing what kinds of images work,” Siaotong says. “At Surface, I appreciated when a stylist knew the history of the magazine and knew what would fit within our aesthetics. Now that I’m on the other side, I always keep that in mind when I’m styling a job for a client.”
Siaotong was at Surface for five years, working with photographers and designers from all over the world. By the time he left in 2007, he had developed a chameleonlike versatility. Siaotong has worked in all kinds of fashion: haute couture, urban, ready to wear, street. Both menswear and womenswear. All demographics. And he has an eye for up-and-coming designers. “There are a lot of great emerging designers out there that if given the opportunity to be featured in a shoot can one day be as big or as successful as the established designers,” he notes.
Although his influences include movies like Peter Sellers’ The Party, Antonioni’s L’Avventura, and Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca, architecture is an important aesthetic touchstone for Siaotong, who originally studied printmaking as a student at California College of the Arts in San Francisco before moving on to architecture and then fashion design. He’s especially drawn to the work of futuristic, free-spirited architects Buckminster Fuller, Gaudi, and Santiago Calatrava.
“I have always had an attraction to the sculptural side of things, whether it’s the form that you see in a painting or the way a building is shaped or the silhouette of a garment,” explains Siaotong. “In my styling work, I try to focus on that. It’s very pared down, very clean. Some of that is probably out of respect for the designer. They have their own vision. So it’s about being very respectful of the clothes and knowing the best angles to shoot it from.”