How Dazed’s fashion team smashed a bunch of Guinness World Records

This shoot originally appeared in Dazed’s Spring 2023 issue.

Long before TikTok monopolised the way children spend their time, we had The Guinness Book of World Records: an annual book series, summarising humans’ and nature’s weirdest and wildest achievements. Whether it was discovering the woman with the world’s longest fingernails, the tallest man, or the longest fashion show (30 hours, to be exact), there was something about the books that satiated boredom and inspired curiosity in generations of children.

Now, in a new editorial for Dazed’s Spring 2023 issue, Dazed print fashion director and stylist Imruh Asha draws from his childhood memories of the book series to create a record-breaking fashion world of his own. “I have been obsessed with The Guinness Book of World Records [for] ages,” he explains.

As an adult, the books were brought back into his mind after he stumbled upon a video of someone trying to break the world record for the most sweaters worn at one time. “I was looking at [it] from a styling point of view and loved how bulky and surreal the silhouette became after putting on multiple layers,” he explains. “This brought me to the idea of doing a fashion series breaking all sorts of fashion records. I like to play with the purpose of clothing and photography. It’s a way for me to not get bored with the shoots I do.”

With an adjudicator from the Guinness World Records present on set – a rule for all record-breaking attempts – photographer Andrea Artemisio captured models laden down with clothes and accessories as the team tried to beat various fashion-focused records. 

From a head-to-toe Kenzo look topped off with 330 neck ties to an ALAÏA fringe coat embellished with hundreds of foldback clips, bodies were blown up with layers of white t-shirts and heads were piled high with stretchy beanies, each look transforms its wearer into maximalist statues of record-breaking proportions.

“I like to play with the purpose of clothing and photography. It’s a way for me to not get bored with the shoots I do” - Imruh Asha

The shoot wasn't without its difficulties. Mid-way through attempting to break the record for most neckties worn at once, the team had to pause and start over to protect the model from suffocating because they were too heavy. Later, on their second attempt the team decided to balance the neck ties on a table, so that they could push them down without harming the model. A few hours and 360 neck ties later, and they had broken the record. Another attempt involving hair clips was also successful. 

“[With] the tallest hat attempt, we also failed,” Asha explains with a laugh, speaking of other challenges that in the end, were not to be. “It had to be taller than 4.2 metres, but the tricky part is that you actually need to be able to walk a distance of ten metres with the hat! I even tried to balance [it] on my head, but it was too complicated.” 

“During this whole process I realised that it's not easy at all to break an existing world record,” Asha notes, reflecting on the team’s challenges. “Someone already put effort and brainpower into being the best at something so to actually break a record again, you need to outsmart the last attempt.” 

Click through the gallery above to see the rest of the record-breaking shoot and get a copy of Dazed’s Spring 2023 issue here.