The British fashion photographer Miles Aldridge’s subjects for The New Yorker include Louboutin shoes, Zaha Hadid, and 3-D movies—and, this week, Jean Paul Gaultier, for Susan Orlean’s profile.

‘For me it was like the models were ghosts and Jean Paul was the magician, conjuring them out of the coloured air,’ Aldridge told me. ‘I have a tendency to be completely controlling with a model: I say this, you do this. With a real subject I still do this to a degree, but often I leave a bit of the picture up to them, which they fill with their personality. There is a big bit of me being revealed in the portraits, too. I remember making a portrait of Rick Owens for The New Yorker, and before we started he said, ‘I imagine this portrait is more important to me than to you.’ To which I replied, ‘I’m not sure about that.’ After the shoot he thanked me for ‘mythologizing’ him. I like this statement as it seems to sum up my approach to portraiture: I photograph what I imagine about the subject as much as what they present to me.’

A selection of Aldridge’s work for Vogue Italia will be on view at Casa Tua during Art Basel Miami Beach in early December. Here’s a look at some of his recent images.