Before Instagram, Candid Photos Of Your Favorite Fashion Editors Probably Looked Like This

When you're the illustrator for magazines like Vogue, Elle, and Harper's Bazaar — and it's the '70s — you'd better have a low-touch way to capture the chaos and glamour that's happening around you. That's exactly what fashion fixture Antonio Lopez did as he jetted across the globe with the industry's wildest and most talented elite. And thankfully, we've got his book Instamatics to relive it all. Think: Grace Coddington, Jerry Hall, Karl Lagerfeld, and more, caught in the middle of life's most mundane, intimate moments.

Ironically enough, the images are what you'd typically find on throwback Instagram accounts today. Only, Lopez wouldn't call himself a photographer. In an interview with Michael McKenzie in 1978, he explained why he used the camera he did: "[It's] the perfect camera for the simple person like me. I guess I could get smart, learn how to use a Nikon and all the fancy equipment, but that would be like saying, 'Hey, I'm a photographer now,' and that would be pretentious of me." We'd be lying if we said we haven't heard this exact argument from photographers today.

Either way, we imagine this is what Instagram looked like some 40 years ago. Despite Lopez's death in 1987, his photographs live on, as well as most of his subjects, too. Ahead, you'll find just a preview of his book, that even itself is a sample of the "hundreds, thousands of shots" he captured. A magnet for beauty in all shapes and sizes, Lopez and his photographs remind us that, at its core, the fashion industry was and always will be a place for anyone: those rejects, defects, and rebels alike.