François Berthoud

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Berthoud was born in Le Locle, Switzerland. After finishing his studies at the School for Graphic Design in Lausanne in 1982, Berthoud went to Milan where he drew cartoons for Alter-Alter and Linus. Early fashion illustrations were commissioned by Anna Piaggi for Condé Nast’s Vanity and since then his work has appeared in many of the leading fashion magazines such as Vogue, Numero and Interview to name just a few.

François Berthoud is now recognized as one of the most original fashion illustrators of the late 20th and early 21st century. More and more avant-garde fashion designers asked him to create their corporate images. Anna Piaggi has written about him: “While François illustrates fashion in an apparently formal and decorative way, in reality he analyzes his subject in depth and with an elegant sense of detachment before recreating it in his atelier-laboratory.... he experiences fashion with a sharp sense of irony and a visual culture rooted in conceptual art. But his style is totally now!”.

Berthoud is fêted by the world's finest creative directors for producing images of the female form that possess an exacting precision and are imbued with a latent eroticism.
 Berthoud’s career has been largely spent working out of a studio in Milan. In 2007 he returned to Switzerland and set up a studio in Zurich.