Through the decades, the fun and feisty runway photographer Niall McInerney shot some 750,000 images that capture a pre-digital age when lensmen were crowded along the length of the high catwalks, focused on capturing the atmosphere and the magical moment rather than a mere documentary record of the designers’ looks. Fashion’s Front Line, a new book from Bloomsbury with text by Nilgin Yusuf, assembles some evocative highlights of McInerney’s career.
Niall left a hardscrabble childhood in Ireland’s Limerick for an early career as a shill and stage manager for a striptease joint in London’s Colin McInnes–era Soho. However, he befriended the professional photographer Lewis Morley (who created the iconic image of the Profumo Affair’s Christine Keeler astride a Verner Panton chair), a Soho local, and under Morley’s tutelage he graduated to photographing the ecdysiasts themselves; it was a short leap, then, to shooting clothed models.
As a fashion-struck teenager, Niall gave me access to his endless contact sheets from the international collections, nurturing my passion at a time when such images were rare as hen’s teeth, and we subsequently worked together for years when I was the fashion editor of London’s Harper’s & Queen magazine. With his Irish charm and steely determination, Niall was relentlessly effective in staking his territorial claim at the shows, securing the best positions and thus many of the most dramatic shots.
Over the course of his career, Naill’s serendipities have included Naomi Campbell’s giggling 1993 tumble from her teetering Vivienne Westwood platforms, along with scene-setting pictures from Yves Saint Laurent’s hautest couture to John Galliano’s celebrated Incroyables collection for his Saint Martins graduation. Along the way Niall captured the changing feminine paradigm, from the Mugler and Montana Amazons of the early ’80s to the Helmut Lang waifs of the ’90s.
Niall was also one of the first to see the possibilities of backstage photography, and of documenting the guests and party crashers at the shows, entertaining all with his dotty Irish spiel. “Are you going to Southend for your holiday?” he would ask Naomi or Linda; they would crack up, and he would have his picture. Snap!
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