After working as a contributing photographer for various magazines, from 35mm cameras to medium format cameras, Fairer became a contract photographer for American Vogue in 2001, forming deep partnerships with renowned editors such as Andre Leon Talley, Hamish Bowles and Sarah Mower.

In Fairer's recollection, Andre would always go backstage to "supervise" his work, "Did you get the white dress? More shots, I want more!" Sometimes even as many as a dozen pages of consecutive publication, for him to open the door to more brand backstage.

For Fairer, the fun of being a backstage photographer is not just about the unreleased clothes and the over-the-top models, the team of designers, models, hair and makeup artists and others work together to create a completely different world from the front desk.

In the eyes of magazines and publishers, these photos are much more interesting than show pictures, and in his eyes, every scene backstage is a true reflection of the creator's personality, "What you have to remember is that those precious hours or minutes before the show are perhaps the most stressful time in a designer's life, they start the day after the last collection, I've been working on the series for six months. But some designers are very calm, like Valentino and Karl Lagerfeld, who have everything ready."

He watched Karl Lagerfeld replace a silver tray of Coca-Cola with a diet, and Lagerfeld says hello every now and then. In Galliano's Dior backstage, huge dress skirts are everywhere, he often needs to squeeze into a corner, find the most appropriate Angle, in order to fully put a dress into the frame, and Pat McGrath's makeup creation makes its fashion more dramatic, "she was always carrying dozens of pieces of luggage filled with books, Sit with the designers and brainstorm."

"Sometimes when I go backstage at McQueen, I meet a girl with cloud makeup, a wig or a prosthetic leg, and McQueen turns them into aliens. The changes ahead are like a roller coaster ride. You never know what's going to happen. You can read a lot into it. It's profound and it's forward-looking."

Among Fairer's works, the most memorable one for him is the image of McQueen himself, "he comes down from the runway, dressed in a bunny suit, with some cartoon music playing live."

"Backstage is a very raw, vibrant, focused environment," and while it was thrilling to capture these unreplicable moments, for Fairer, a sense of loss came over as the show drew to a close and the backstage noise died down.

In a way, it is not only the end of a show, but also the end of an era.

Some say Fairer's creation documents one of the most glamorous eras in fashion.

Since the European financial crisis in 2008, this era seems to be gradually drawing to a close: Fairer's exclusive cooperation with Vogue is coming to an end, Alexander McQueen suddenly fell, John Galliano also stepped down from the altar in the controversy, meanwhile, the era of social media is threatening, major brands will open their backstage to more bloggers, and everyone is busy to catch up with the timeliness of social platform release. The aura of this mysterious world is fading.

When the number of backstage photographers almost outnumbered the models, Fairer chose to step back from the increasingly crowded crowd and sift through the millions of photos she has shot over the past two decades to revisit a golden age that is not yet far away.

"A lot of these images were taken on film, especially before 2007. When those images are enlarged, you get caught up in them and you discover new elements, maybe what's going on in the background, or there are details on the shoes that you never realized were there, or the print elements on the dress."

"Not only McQueen, I also like John Galliano, admire Karl Lagerfeld for his extraordinary creativity, and Marc Jacobs is also an important designer."

Fairer is lucky, no doubt, for he travels the runway during the heyday of these designers and captures their unique moments on camera.

At a time when stereotypical spot shots are becoming ubiquitous on the Internet, Fairer and his wife set out to give these backstage shots a second life in a whole new way.

Since 2016, Fairer has rearchived its past photography work with a series titled Unseen, which has also featured books by designers Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, and Marc Jacobs, The latest book in the series, "Karl Lagerfeld-Unseen," was released last month and will also feature a number of exclusive images of supermodel Stella Tennant.

Meanwhile, Fairer's photography has been the subject of major exhibitions such as the V&A, the Los Angeles Museum of Art (LACMA) and the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), and at the end of last year, the SCAD Fashion Museum dedicated his Backstage Pass: Dior, Galliano, Jacobs and McQueen's first solo exhibition.

While the golden years of Fairer's work are gone forever, as he says, "Backstage is where the magic happens, and by putting these images out there now and in hindsight, we've actually found a new opportunity to communicate with everyone in the world and share these incredible moments in fashion history."