Some projects make the news. Stéphanie Vanden Berghe’s latest project is quite literally made from it.
The award-winning photographer and SPC Academy alumna recently created an extraordinary haute-couture gown using discarded newspapers. Conceived for the 2026 Earth Partner Prize, an international competition focused this year on the ecological crisis, the project was recently written up in the newspaper La Côte.
A fragile material with a powerful message
For Stéphanie, the gown was more than an ambitious styling exercise. It was a way to explore waste, consumption and the stories carried by the objects we throw away.
She invited people in and around Tolochenaz to contribute their old newspapers. In the end, Stéphanie incorporated pages from around 50 editions of regional newspapers and magazines.
Inspired by the dramatic silhouettes of Marie Antoinette’s era, she constructed a regal gown with a fitted bodice, a voluminous skirt and a train measuring approximately 1.5 metres. The skirt alone required eleven overlapping layers of newspaper, attached to a linen base using heat-set adhesive.
The result is visually spectacular—but also deliberately fragile. Paper is temporary and easily discarded, while the finished gown appears monumental and precious. That contrast lies at the heart of the work: what happens when yesterday’s news, much of it documenting the concerns and events of a community, is transformed into something impossible to overlook?
As Stéphanie explained to La Côte, the dress tells the story of a region—its worries, its projects and its successes. It also turns the written press into a kind of haute-couture fabric, giving discarded pages a second life.
Bringing the vision to life
Professional model Natalia Ruck, styled by Beauty Bee Makeup, wore the gown for a photo shoot in the fields of Tolochenaz. With such a delicate creation, there was no guarantee that it would survive being worn outdoors. Each section was constructed independently so that a tear or fall would not bring down the entire dress.
The shoot took place on 12 August, in the intense summer heat and close to the solar eclipse. The unusual light added another atmospheric dimension to the final photographs.
Beyond their beauty, the images invite us to think more carefully about the value we assign to materials—and about our own place within a culture of constant production, consumption and disposal.
An award-winning visual storyteller
In 2024, Stéphanie completed the 4-week SPC Academy program, an intensive and highly personalized learning experience that helped her further develop her technical skills and creative direction. Since then, she has built a distinctive body of work centred on emotion, introspection, resilience and human connection.
Since then, her photography has received extensive recognition both in Switzerland and internationally. In 2025, she won the First Public Prize at the SPC Photo Awards Geneva for A Fragile Journey. Her cinematic self-portrait Through Fire and Rain also received an Honorable Mention at the 2025 ND Awards. She has been selected seven times at the International Photography Awards (IPA), receiving an honorable mention three times. And the list goes on, not only because of her talent, but also because of her tremendous work ethic.
Proud to have been part of her journey
One of the greatest pleasures of teaching photography is getting to know photographers while their creative voices are developing, and then watching them carry those voices far beyond the program. Stéphanie’s awards and glowing press recognition are richly deserved, and we could not be happier to see her thriving.
Congratulations, Stéphanie. We are proud of everything you are accomplishing, and very grateful that the SPC Academy program gave us the opportunity to get to know you and your work.
Discover more of Stéphanie Vanden Berghe’s photography and read La Côte’s coverage of the newspaper-dress project.
