‘Festin’
Forgive me, ladies and gentlemen, for being frank, but I don’t think I’ll surprise too many people when I say that I am no Terry Richardson fan. In fact, he makes my skin crawl in the same way that the idea of eating snails makes my skin crawls - and trust me, I tried ‘em, the bark was definitely no worse than the bite. As far as I can tell, the underage girls smeared with suspicious looking liquids, the flower pictures, the scandal surrounding various pieces for Purple magazine… (don’t even get me started on Olivier Zahm - he’s a whole other story). Urghghghgh. It’s a whole world of distasteful.
Imagine my surprise, then, when idly flicking through Fashionologie, I stumbled across these stunning shots of the beauty Crystal Renn, styled by Carine Roitfeld and shot by Richardson for Vogue Paris.
The French do many things wonderfully - food, architecture, walk in wardrobes, the clothes that go in the walk in wardrobes - but one thing I think they often tend to steer well clear of is controversy. In the year I spent foraging through the pages of Vogue Paris desperately searching for a glimpse of that British style (a little grungey and a little new) that I missed so dearly, the closest I think I came was a model in khaki smeared with baby oil, and Kate Moss wearing Matthew Williamson on a yacht. And God knows, I’m not complaining. If anything, the distinct personalities of the fashion capitals are something to be celebrated, not denounced. But still, a little boundary pushing rarely goes amiss.
Which might be why this shoot was so enthralling to me. It was inspired by the 1973 film ‘La Grande Bouffe’, in which a group of men “retire to a villa to eat themselves to death”, and so of course the significance of using Crystal Renn, one of the industry’s most celebrated plus size models, is all but lost. But instead of being demoralising, as so many of France’s ‘plus size’ shoots seem to have missed the mark, the images are powerful, provocative, and hugely compelling. Richardson’s intentions coupled with Roitfeld’s styling and Renn’s unquestionnable beauty create a series of images that are absolutely perfect for Vogue Paris, with just the right measure of audacious.
Carine Roitfeld says of the shoot: “In 90 years, we haven’t changed the mood of the magazine. It’s still very audacious. It’s still about beauty. It’s still about excess. It’s still very avant-garde … We try to be sophisticated, while a little on the edge all the time.”
She continues: “What I can see is that now, the censoring is bigger than it was 20, 30, or 40 years ago. I think we have less freedom. Today some pictures [from past issues of Vogue Paris] would not even be publishable. It’s not just about the nudity, but when you talk about things politically, the military, kids, it would all be politically incorrect and not publishable today. We have to fight to keep this un-politically correct attitude of French Vogue, but it’s more and more difficult to be able do that. You cannot smoke, you cannot show arms, you cannot show little girls, because everyone now is very anxious not to have problems with the law. Everything we do now is like walking in high heels on the ice, but we keep trying to do it.”
And very well done it is, too.
Read the full article at Fashionologie. The photographs will be printed in Vogue Paris’ 90th anniversary issue.
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