Morgan O’Donovan is literally the best backstage photographer of our generation. Fashion week is utter madness… and when they say ‘week’ they are liars. It’s a month of frantically dashing always late between costume changes and queues – a wetwipe on the crowded Eurostar and then a 17-bed-bunker in Milan (why do hotel rooms fill up twenty five seasons in advance?) In the eye of the storm somehow Mr. O’Donovan manages to capture quiet, private and tranquil moments. His girls have Mona Lisa smirks, they are happy and playful and look as rested as the residents of Babington House Spa. How can he make the whole hurrah look so docile! Is there a secret behind the lense we can’t see? Does he walk round holding puppies or something?

The pictures manage to pin down a detail – a moment – that would otherwise be lost to the style.com ether. By the time the next season rolls around and the editors have picked their favourites there is so much that has been lost. So much painstaking attention to detail that becomes blurred and in his own way Morgan is preserving these lovely morsels; the designers’ and the stylists’ and the seamstresses’ and the models’ little scraps of handwriting – the way a peter-pan collar was cocked just so or the particular lacquer on a hand finished evening bag or the fingerprint of a piece of hand-made lace.

Check out Morgan’s tumblr where he posts one unseen backstage picture a day. Morgan shot a gang of our P&P contributors in MA Menswear for Issue 4, and has been part of the P&P family since Issue 1 (when we interviewed and he photographed Gary Card – whose career has since exploded!) Morgan shoots for Dazed and Confused and Self Service and we can’t wait to bump into him backstage soon.