In any office other than Terry Richardson's, this might be considered sexual harassment

detail/diesel mexico's twitter

Just another day at the office for Terry Richardson, photographed here during what appears to be a Diesel photoshoot. Below is the original photo as it appeared on Diesel Mexico’s Twitter feed several hours ago (NSFW). The male models are all wearing Diesel underwear, while the controversial American photographer has dropped both his trousers and boxer shorts. Although his hand is covering his privates, Richardson's pubic hair is clearly visible. It’s not entirely clear what the shoot is for or how old the photo is, but Richardson and Diesel have a longstanding commercial relationship, which embraces several Diesel advertising campaigns (including at least one Diesel Intimate campaign), the publication of a book of Richardson’s photographs of Hong Kong and even a clothing collaboration. 

It's probably a safe bet that all of these models are over the age of 18. Richardson has previously stated on his website that he will only work with 18+ models, thereby reducing his risk of exposure to any claims of child pornography and exploitation. 

But assuming that he knew this behind-the-scenes Diesel shot was due to be published, what exactly is the point Richardson is trying to make here? That, when it comes to the now fairly widespread claims of his inappropriate workplace behaviour with regard to women, which include numerous allegations that he has exposed himself on set and engaged in sexually predatory behaviour – with Rie Rasmussen and Jamie Peck going on the record last year - he’s an equal opportunity offender?  

Update 1/12: According to one of the commenters on Fashionista's pickup of this story, this shot of Richardson with male models is from the Hong Kong Terry Richardson book, which was published by Diesel earlier this year. The book showcases a series of images taken by Richardson in Hong Kong in 2007.  

diesel mexico's twitter

Chloe Sevigny covers Candy as Terry Richardson

screen cap/luis venegas's vimeo

Candy, the world’s “first transversal style magazine”, frocked up model Luke Worrall and actor James Franco as women for the covers of its first and second issues. For its just-launched third issue, Candy has transformed actor Chloe Sevigny into a drag king – and in fact, in character as photographer Terry Richardson, with his trademark flannel shirt, glasses, sideburns and thumbs up. Having shot both the Worrall and Franco covers, presumably Richardson shot this one as well. Sevigny has more than a passing interest in the subject of transsexuality. She earned an Academy Award nomination as Lana Tisdel, the girlfriend of murdered transgender man Brandon Teena, in Kimberley Pierce’s 1999 film Boy’s Don’t Cry. She voiced the role of Andy Warhol’s male-to-female superstar Candy Darling in James Rasin’s 2010 documentary Beautiful Darling. And she recently shot a British television series called Hit & Miss, in which she plays a transgender Irish assassin. She also has some commonality with the controversial Richardson. Sevigny is in a minority of mainstream actors to have engaged in an unsimulated sex act in a film – Vincent Gallo’s 2003 Brown Bunny, in which she performed fellatio on co-star Gallo. Richardson has pushed the boundaries of pornography like no other in fashion - coming under fire for the alleged exploitation and degradation of some of his models in the process - and his personal work features a high volume of imagery of himself engaging in unsimulated sexual acts. Sevigny copped a lot of flak herself over Brown Bunny. So, lots to chat about during the cover shoot.

Bambi Northwood-Blyth covers V magazine with Lindsey Wixson

v magazine

Australia's Bambi Northwood-Blyth is on a roll. Behold the latest cover of US fashion magazine V starring Northwood-Blyth together with Lindsey Wixson - one of four covers of V's issue #74, shot by Terry Richardson and styled by ex Vogue Paris editor Carine Roitfeld. Each cover pairs together two models, most of them high profile. Head to V's website to see the others, featuring Candice Swanepoel and Joan Smalls; Daphne Groeneveld and Saskia de Brauw and Sui He and Hanaa Ben Abdesslem. "These eight girls are unique" Roitfeld told WWD. "It's their diversity that makes each of them, to me, truly modern. They bring a new energy to fashion". This may be Northwood-Blyth's first major international cover, but it's her fifth OS cover this year, after French Revue des Modes (Spring/Summer 2011), Vogue Nippon (April 2011), Harpers Bazaar Espana (May 2011) and the current Fall/Winter 2011 cover of the Barcelona-based Metal magazine. And that's not the end of her V duties. She will be co-hosting V's Halloween party tomorrow night in New York with Richardson, Smalls, Swanepoel and He. Will her designer/DJ love interest "Dangerous Dan" Single play a set?

Action Jackson

johan sandberg via models.com

So the Spring/Summer 2012 shows kick off in New York overnight. As anticipated, a contingent of antipodian models is in situ, preparing to sink its teeth into the season. Some are international runway vets, others newbies, eager for a blockbuster first season. After turning down one blue chip European brand for two recent shoots and planning to wait until January to head offshore, Penrith’s own Krystal Glynn has had a change of heart and is in New York now. Stand by to see just where she pops up over the next four weeks. Ditto 17 year-old Brisbanite Nicole Pollard. Both Glynn and Pollard have been nominated by influential New York casting director Michelle Lee as two of Lee's top 12 new girls to watch for the season. Joining this burgeoning Aussie/Kiwi model posse is Jade Jackson from Melbourne. Modelling for one year, the 20 year old former nursing student, who is repped by Viviens in Australia and One Management in New York, was so under the radar in February this year, she managed to walk in 10 Fall/Winter 2011/2012 shows, including Richard Nicoll, Jaeger and Haider Ackermann, unbeknownst to most Australian modelwatchers (including frockwriter).

Jackson then caught the eye of H&M and Terry Richardson, who cast her in the fast fashion chain’s Fall/Winter 2011/2012 campaign. Jackson co-stars opposite no less than Freja Beha Erichsen and Anja Rubik, who are ranked the world numbers two and three respectively by models.com – which reckons Jackson is going into the SS12 season with “most wanted status”. 

The H&M campaign is currently up on billboards in New York. Here's a video:

Jennifer Hawkins puts the Love into Lovable with an Uncle Terry-style "porn star" campaign

Lots of buzz yesterday over the launch of Lovable’s new Love Colour collection down on Bondi Beach. The new lingerie collection is based around sorbet colours and so Lovable ambassador Jennifer Hawkins and a gaggle of lingerie-clad models doled out ice creams - and lingerie - from a Mr Whippy van. Most interesting of all: the set of campaign images that was released online overnight and which according to Lovable, will appear in next week’s editions of Grazia, Cosmopolitan and Shop Til You Drop magazines. Conceived by Sydney-based Studio Woo and lensed by Australian fashion photographer Simon Lekias, the shots depict the former Miss Universe horsing around with a blueberry milkshake, a watermelon wedge and an ice cream cone filled with lemon sorbet. It’s the way Hawkins is holding the cone that grabs your attention. The cone is not far from her mouth, her mouth is wide open and sorbet is dripping down her arm. The Lovable press release describes the images as “cheekily suggestive”. Everyone to whom frockwriter showed the shots this afternoon concurred they are highly suggestive: of notorious American photographer Terry Richardson. And we all know what Richardson would be suggesting the cone and the white sorbet would be in this scenario. Warning NSFW photos.

In spite of the fact that the press release describes the shots as “cheekily suggestive images destined to set temperatures soaring across the country”, a spokeswoman for Lovable's parent company Gazal denied that the ice cream cone image was supposed to suggest Hawkins administering a blowjob - or indeed that Terry Richardson was the inspiration. 

“I’m sure there will be some complaints” said Gazal's Dianne Taylor. “We normally do get them when we put a female in lingerie in any sort of advertising. But we don’t see that [blowjob/semen scenario] at all. That representation was not intended at all”.

“The creative is suggestive, but a lot of Lovable’s creative has been suggestive in the past” said Taylor, adding that a billboard ad featuring Hawkins with a stuffed rhinoceros and the tagline “Feeling horny?” was banned in New Zealand in 2007.

“The brief was to launch the colour range, to play on Lovable’s cheeky tone of voice, which in the past has pushed boundaries. She [Hawkins] was comfortable to push the boundaries a little further. Justin Woo [Studio Woo] came up with the idea of the props”.

Woo was in transit from Melbourne when frockwriter called his studio this afternoon. But even a studio colleague conceded the campaign has "a Terry Richardson feel" to it.

Richardson has shot one campaign in Australia – a controversial Lee Jeans campaign in 2006, for which he was paid an estimated $200,000. At the time, industry sources told me that this figure was ten times what a local photographer would have been paid for the same campaign. 

Richardson’s fashion work (below) has always blurred the boundaries between art and pornography.

When it comes to his personal work, however, there are no boundaries whatsoever – it is hardcore porn and Richardson himself is centre stage in pretty much every shot, giving a whole new meaning to the term photographic shoot. 


But not everyone, it seems, has been having fun on jobs with "Uncle Terry". 

Earlier this year a number of fashion models spoke out about Richardson, claiming he is a sexual predator who abuses the trust of inexperienced young women by encouraging them into compromising situations in order to take degrading images. The story made headlines around the world. Richardson is however still working, as busy as ever it seems.

It's interesting that a mainstream Australian brand such as Lovable would go anywhere near the style of his more risque work at this particular time. Especially a company that advocates corporate social responsibility via collaborations with femme-friendly organisations such as The Butterfly Foundation. 

To quote the Lovable website:

“We are dedicated to changing the culture surrounding eating disorders and body image through our support of Butterfly, by using happy, healthy models in our campaigns and promotional activities and by continuing to design intimates that are not created to objectify women’s bodies but to make women look, and most importantly feel, great when they wear them”.

images

1, 2/ supplied by lovable
3/ sisley via terryrichardson.com
4/ pirelli 2009 calendar, menstyle.it via fashionologie
5/ rolling stone via high snobiety
6/ lee jeans via the age

A breast man: Tom Ford on "becoming post-human" and "hard" beauty

steven klein for w/tfs

On Tuesday, Tom Ford’s directorial debut, A Single Man, was released on DVD. Although critically-acclaimed, the film made just US$9million at the domestic box office – and, seemed virtually impossible to find on download at the time of release, due to an apparent lack of geek interest. Miramax hopes it will now find its audience. To celebrate the DVD launch, yesterday NPR radio re-broadcast an interview Ford did with NPR’s Fresh Air host Terry Gross back on December 14 last year. Perhaps the original became subsumed by the deluge of publicity Ford did at the time of the film's theatrical release, because this iv does not appear to have travelled far afield. Below is an MP3 of the full 20 minute interview.




In Ford's own words:

* His critical fashion eye first manifested itself at age seven/eight when he started noticing his shoes were "the wrong shape".

* His earliest Gucci collections in 1995 and 1996 were the most influential, but his last few collections for Gucci and for Yves Saint Laurent, from 2003-2004, were more interesting, thanks in large part to his exposure to the ateliers at Gucci and YSL. “I had learned at that point how to make more complex clothes, both cerebrally as well as technically”

On the 1970s ambiance of the velvet hiphuggers etc in his breakthrough 1995 Gucci collection vs contemporary fashion:

“They were a throwback to a period in the 1970s when fashion was more touchable. Today, you know, fashion is not - our beauty standard today is harder. It's beautiful but it's off-putting. It's like, don't touch me, I'm hard”.

On beautiful women and ageing:

“If you're a beautiful woman, you're incredibly powerful within our culture. The world operates differently for you. Then, at a moment in time, and it has nothing to do with you, it's like the carpet is just ripped out from under you, and the way that you've operated in the world no longer works. So Julianne's character is struggling”.

Ford also spends quite some time discussing women’s breasts:

“Cars look like someone took an air pump and pumped them up. They look engorged. Lips pumped up, breasts pumped up, everything is pumped up. And it's also kind of off-putting. It's sexual but in such a hard way that it's, for me, not sexual at all, whereas the 1970s, breasts were smaller. People were not wearing bras. Farrah Fawcett's sexuality and sensuality was a very touchable sexuality. She was kissable. She was friendly. I don't understand all these breasts right now, and they don't look like breasts. They look like someone's taken a grapefruit half and inserted it under your skin. I mean it's - it doesn't even bear any resemblance to what a natural breast looks like. But we're starting to think that this is what women should like. And young girls are looking at these breasts and thinking, oh, I need to go have my breasts done because they've lost touch with what a real breast actually looks like. I find it fascinating. I find it disturbing. I mean, you could consider it more fascinating because we're becoming post-human”.

Judging by this interview with Ford, conducted by GQ magazine earlier this year - in which Ford volunteers “I could really improve breast implants” - he spent quite some time on A Single Man’s promo trail talking breasts. Which is interesting, because there are none in the film. Instead, lots of long, lingering, homoerotic slow-mos of semi-clad and naked men, as you might expect from a gay male love story (and indeed, much contemporary fashion imagery).

Of course, Ford is entitled to an opinion about breasts. But given criticism that Miramax deliberately “de-gayed” the marketing of A Single Man, by playing up the (strictly platonic) relationship between Colin Firth’s and Julianne Moore’s characters in the trailer and posters to give the film more mainstream appeal – with even the film's lead actor Colin Firth weighing into the brouhaha, calling it "deceptive" – a cynic might well ask if there was a deliberate strategy on Ford's part to pump up the breast talk and play down the cock?

Here's the trailer for anyone who missed it:



It’s not like Ford has never deliberately marketed to straight men before.

The following ads lensed by Terry ‘King of sleaze’ Richardson for the Tom Ford for Men fragrance campaign hardly seem to be pitching to the gays (although one other shot in the campaign, of the same bottle nestled in a man's buttocks, did).

Curiously, when it came to flogging his men's perfume, Ford appeared to overcome his personal distaste for the “post-human” breast shape which he believes looks “like someone's taken a grapefruit half and inserted it under your skin” and hired a model with the fruitiest boobs he could find.

 terry richardson for tom ford/narcissus