In a fashion and media landscape awash with AI-generated content and the same regurgitated ideas, it feels rare to come across a concept that makes you do a double-take for all the right reasons. So, I was pleasantly surprised during an Instagram doom-scroll last year, when I came across a series of images for The Cut magazine featuring Rama Duwaji, an artist and the wife of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani.
The striking black-and-white photographs captured Duwaji in a surreal visual world, as she posed inside an enclosed box with cardboard props while wearing comically exaggerated silhouettes. These images felt like a breath of fresh air compared to the traditional, stuffier portraits of political families that the public is used to. They successfully conveyed a sense of character, artistic interest, and playfulness that has been lacking in many editorial photoshoots in recent years. In fact, swiping through these images felt almost equivalent to walking through an art gallery.
The creative mind behind this shoot is Szilveszter Makó, a Hungarian-born photographer and art director based in Milan. This year alone, he has photographed celebrities including Elle Fanning, Rihanna, Daisy Edgar-Jones, and Marina Abramović. But no matter who he works with, his personal style is immediately recognisable, while remaining central to the identity of the image.
A direct comparison: Olivia Rodrigo for Vogue
A specific example of Szilveszter Makó’s golden touch with respect to fashion-related photography comes from two separate Vogue covers this year, both featuring Olivia Rodrigo.
The April 2026 cover for British Vogue presents Rodrigo on a beach, wearing a Givenchy deconstructed crystal piece and balancing on a plastic chair that looks as though it could have been grabbed from a secondary school classroom and dumped straight onto the sand. The cover drew criticism for lacking creative inspiration or a cohesive artistic vision, and safe to say it won’t be standing out in anyone’s memory as a particularly groundbreaking Vogue cover.
Meanwhile, Olivia Rodrigo is also the cover star of Szilveszter Makó’s shoot for the September issue of Vogue Philippines, which has been met with widespread acclaim. The shoot features Rodrigo lying or posing against hand-painted backdrops that pay homage to her heritage, including details such as a báháy kúbo and a kalachuchi flower. The images are captivating in their detail and have the quality of Renaissance paintings rather than modern-day photographs.
The stark visual contrast between these two shoots and the resulting feedback from the magazine’s consumer audience highlights the unmistakable talent Makó possesses, and the growing appreciation that a bored and frustrated audience feels for his creative output.
Reimagining the fashion magazine cover
Part of Makó’s appeal is his reimagining of the traditional celebrity cover that fashion magazines have gravitated towards for as long as anyone can remember. There has been a noticeable sense of fatigue growing over the last decade or so, with more and more individuals voicing their complaints about the lack of creative inspiration present in fashion magazine covers. There are only so many times you can realistically attempt to pass off a close-up of a recognisable face against a plain background as fresh or exciting before people begin to glaze over the copy-paste covers and turn elsewhere.
However, it’s an unfortunate reality that in the social media age when traditional print media is struggling, the vast majority of people are more likely to pick up a magazine that has their favourite actor or pop star on the cover as opposed to an obscure high-fashion model.
Szilveszter Makó bridges the gap between mainstream celebrity appeal and unique creative vision. His covers feature household names who remain instantly recognisable, but he strips the essence of their celebrity away until it is no longer the focal point of the image. In the age of over-saturation, AI slop content and celebrity worship, Szilveszter Makó presents an alternative reality that places art back in the centre of the frame.