THE SELECTION

To celebrate our newly launched Self Service website Index, we asked
Tommy Ton of JakandJil to select his favorite images.

1. What is your obsession of the moment?
Tumblr without a doubt. I get lost in it so easily and I just love how you can jump from one to the other quite easily. I find it so much more inspiring than blogs because I'm more of a visual type of person and to see how people have curated their inspirations is more appealing to me. Tumblr is like a sea of mood boards.

2. When did you discover Self Service?
I embarrassed to say I think I discovered it while I was in an American Apparel store in Toronto in 2006. I was pretty shocked I had never seen a magazine curated so well. I remember specifically seeing Irina on the cover and picking it up. I was obsessed upon discovering the magazine.

3. Which is your favourite issue?
That's a hard question because I favor a lot of issues but probably I enjoyed issue 26 (the Chloë Sevigny issue) the most. To see Chloë captured by various photographers, the right photographers, it was truly a gift to fashion.

4. Do you collect Self Service, if so, why?
I'm a hardcore collector of Self Service. I've made it my life's mission to collect the entire series. I'm actually two issues away from having the entire collection. I'm very fortunate that I was personally given issue number one by Ezra after he took my polaroid for issue 32. Since then, I've been watching Ebay like a hawk and battling it out to get those final issues I need. I collect Self Service in particular because there are no other fashion publications quite like it and when you first get your hands on the new editions, you just feel like you've bought a cherished book of beautiful images and moments in time. Self Service also marks my favorite period in fashion, my teens, and to see all those clothes and models captured so beautifully it just brings a big smile when I go back and flip through those earlier issues. Plus, I also feel no other publication celebrates fashion as well as Self Service does.

5. Which is your favorite editorial?
I absolutely love it when Ezra photographs the models with his polaroid camera and focuses on various parts of their bodies and the accessories and then lays it out beautifully the way he does. The editorial in issue 30 with Lara Stone, Raquel Zimmerman, Dree Hemingway, and Eniko Mihalik is so incredibly sexual and epitomizes French fashion in my opinion. I still get inspired each time I go back and look at those images.

6. What are your upcoming projects?
I can't really say too much about what I'm doing but I'm very excited about one shoot I just did recently with Vanessa Traina that was a year in planning and I'm excited to edit that. Also, I plan on doing some work on my site and trying to lay it out differently and archive my images better.