I was out and about on London’s South Bank yesterday evening learning how to make cocktails and I took a couple of pictures of the building and an art installation under a bridge. I think London is very good at having art in unexpected places, for example they are now taking applications for people to stand on the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square for an hour each. Anyone can do it…
I love these new adverts for Christian Louboutin! They have been shot by photographer Peter Lippman in an 18th century style, to copy some of the famous still lives from that era. It’s so orginal and I think beautiful. Another concept to push creative teams for design houses to come up with more innovative campaigns.
The things you do for fashion! I had a very random night last night. One of the stylist’s I work for was asked if she could help with a store opening for Pal Zileri and Edmond Frette in Westfield. Unfortunately she is abroad working – clients don’t pay for assistants to fly out, they tend to hire on location – so she offered my help… I turned up for the event yesterday and discovered the plan was for me to spend the evening lying in a bed in the shopwindow, while a champagne reception went on all around me. I was originally going to be in cotton hot pants and a frilly camisole top but I have to say I turned down that option in favour of a nightie and dressing gown. Getting into bed with a male model – he thought he was turning up to wear a suit – was a little bizarre, but we were lucky enough to be served champagne and canapes throughout and it ended up being fun… three hours of reading papers and magazines and chatting to all the people who came up to talk to us. Some of the photos are quite shaky, what can I tell you, you just can’t get the photographers these days – that would be my sister – but I hope you get the general idea. Crazy times people, crazy times.
I just wanted to say a quick word about the difficulties at Christian Lacroix. It’s a really sad aspect of the financial issues going on in the world that a fashion house of this quality should be struggling. One feels that beautiful fabrics and a fantastical vision should be immune to these things. Certainly for Lacroix his talents lie in his couture; his ready-to-wear collections have never sold well. It’s one of the shows I look forward to seeing most, actually to go to the show would be dream come true.
What you have to remember about Lacroix is that he is creating a fantasy of what dresses can be, practicality is not welcome here. It is important when looking at his designs that you don’t place the usual requirements of everyday life on them. Each dress is a work of art. Lacroix has a unique skill in mixing patterns, draping and manipulating beautiful fabrics. His work is full of colour and texture. ‘He was a man at the centre of a fairy tale world and it seems there will be no happy ending’ (The Times). I hope this is not true because the fashion world needs visionaries like Mr Lacroix.
This is the July ’09 cover of British Vogue featuring Julianne Moore photographed by Alasdair McLellan. To me it all seems a bit autumnal, you would expect this cover from a October, November issue. The light doesn’t look summery, nor do the heavy clothes. The make-up on the cover seems quite ageing on her face. For July I would have preferred the shoot to have that bleached sunshine-filled-days feel, light beautiful clothes and dewy make-up with the promise of long warm evenings and ice cold drinks. I don’t mean the cliched ‘by the pool, pink lip gloss and wafting florals’, but something genuinely original to evoke summer.
Nope, it’s a shoe! A very architectural shoe from Celine costing a mere £769, with a whopping 16cm heel and 5 1/2cm wedge, these are not for the faint hearted. I pride myself on being able to walk in most shoes but even I don’t think I could handle these, but I’d like to try!!
So these were the covers of last month’s French Elle. They are unretouched pictures of Monica Bellucci, Eva Herzigova and Sophie Marceau. This is a pretty touchy (get it!) subject within the industry, whether photoshop is necessary or in fact takes away from the actual ‘art’ of the picture and the uniqueness of people’s faces, ie wrinkles, freckles, moles. I come down in the middle, a very unusual place for me! I think that as long as you are aware that people are heavily altered to have no flaws at all and slimmed down to with an inch of what is anatomically possible then let magazines do that. I find these Elle covers a little uncomfortable to look at. I think you expect on a cover of a magazine that you’re paying for a certain standard of make-up, great hair and perhaps a piece of Armani, and anyway there are more attractive ways of shooting women without make-up although I applaud them for trying!
A perfect example of how out of control photoshop has got is Sienna Miller’s American Vogue cover a couple of years back. Anna Wintour said they eventually had to take her head from one photo and put it on another shot of her body…now that is extreme! I think there is a happy medium to photoshop and that’s what magazines need to find.
avogueidea 