Men’s underwear photography: 650 flat lays for Todd Sanfield

Underwear is one of the least forgiving things you can put in front of a camera. The garment is small, the fabric is fine and stretchy, it creases if you look at it wrong, and there is no seam, no print and no pocket for the eye to land on — so every soft fold and every millimetre of colour shift shows. On a product page where one style runs in fifteen colours, the customer isn’t comparing a photo to reality. They’re comparing your fifteen photos to each other.

Todd Sanfield came to us with 650 pieces of men’s underwear and swimwear to shoot, and a standard already set: high-end, immaculately clean, no creasing, styled to perfection. He had tried several other studios before us and hadn’t been happy with any of the results.

Starting with a paid test, not the order

We didn’t start by shooting 650 pieces. We started by shooting 58.

Todd sent a test box covering every style in the line, in a deliberate range of fabrics — the smooth stretch knits, the ribbed cotton, the technical swim fabric. It was shot and delivered on its own, before the main order was scheduled. A paid test on a first order of this size is the cheapest part of the whole project: it settles the look while the stakes are one box, not the full catalog.

We shot the test two ways. Every style went through ghost mannequin and through tabletop flat lay, so the decision could be made on real frames of his own product rather than on a description.

Choosing the technique per style

The two methods answer different questions, and the test showed which question each style was asking.

Ghost mannequin gives a garment true three-dimensional shape and shows the inside — the waistband from behind, the way a piece sits open. For a handful of Todd’s styles that was exactly right, and those pieces are shot that way to this day.

Tabletop flat lay was what he chose for most of the line. Shot from directly overhead, it gives the clean, graphic, controlled presentation the brand is built on, and it keeps a fifteen-colour run looking like one grid instead of fifteen slightly different photographs.

We shoot both. The point of the test was never to crown a winner — it was to decide, style by style, which one shows that particular piece at its best.

How a pinned flat lay is actually built

A flat lay of underwear is not a garment laid flat. Laid flat, it reads as a limp shape with a wrinkle across the middle.

Each piece is built on the table: pinned into position, then filled and shaped from underneath so the front panel carries real volume, the leg openings hold their curve, and the waistband runs straight and level. The filling is what pulls the fabric taut, which is also what removes the creasing — not at the retouching stage, but at the styling stage, before the shutter fires. Pins and supports sit behind the garment where the camera can’t see them, and the last of them come out in retouching.

That’s the difference between a flat lay that looks like laundry and one that looks like the product. It takes a stylist’s hands on every single piece, and on a 650-piece order that is most of the work.

650 pieces, three shipments, 7 business days each

With the look approved, the main order followed: 650 pieces in total, one image per piece, arriving in three shipments of roughly 200 as Todd’s stock came together.

Seven business days from the box landing to the files arriving — which meant the brand was uploading its first 200 product pages while the next shipment was still in transit.

Batched delivery is normal for us and it’s planned for, not worked around. The lighting recipe, camera height, crop and styling rules were locked during the test and held for every shipment after it, so box three matches box one exactly — which is the part that usually breaks when a catalog is split across several shoots.

Many styles, many colourways

Todd’s line is built the way most underwear brands are: a handful of well-cut styles, each running in a long list of colours and prints.

That makes colour accuracy the whole game. A navy that drifts blue, a sage that drifts grey, a nude that drifts pink — any of those turns into a return, because the customer ordered the swatch they saw on screen. Every colourway is matched to the physical garment under the same locked lighting, and colours in the same family are checked against each other, not just against the original, so the run holds together when it’s seen as a grid on a category page.

Prints get the same treatment in reverse: the geometry has to stay square and evenly scaled across the piece, so a repeat reads as a designed pattern and not as a distorted one.

Swim, and then everything else

The order included swim trunks alongside the underwear — a different problem again, since technical swim fabric is glossy and shows every handling mark, and a drawcord has to be tied and sit the same way on every single colour of the same short.

Since that first project we’ve kept shooting for the brand. Follow-up drops. Creative, styled flat lays built for Instagram rather than for the product page — colour groupings, floating arrangements, hard light and real shadow. And as the label expanded beyond underwear into apparel, the comfort collection: tees, tanks, crewnecks, joggers and sweatpants, plus the close-up detail frames — collar construction, drawcord tips, woven labels and hang tags — that carry the fabric story a flat product shot can’t.

The next order takes the same specification into tailored menswear: linen shirts and trousers.

Common questions about underwear and swim photography

If you sell underwear, swim or basics

Small garments, fine fabrics and long colour runs reward a studio that has shot them before. Ship your samples, approve the look on a test, and get upload-ready files back.

See our flat lay photography and ghost mannequin photography services, or get a quote.