The fashion commute

steven meisel via vogue.it

In one of those amusing art-imitates-life scenarios, the ever-creative Vogue Italia released a preview of its November cover story overnight. A 26-page fashion editorial lensed, of course, by Steven Meisel, 'The A train' depicts supermodel Raquel Zimmermann commuting on the New York subway, whilst kitted out in various luxury brand finery and flanked by a cast of black-suited salarymen. Anyone familiar with Australia's annual Melbourne Cup Carnival will be reminded of very similar scenes on Melbourne's Flemington Racecourse Line at this time of year. At time of writing, the latter is in the process of delivering a hefty percentage of the 100,000 that are expected to attend today's Melbourne Cup - just with a much higher volume of women in hats. Whilst the traditional dress code for Derby Day is black and white (ignored on Saturday by, among others, Dita Von Teese), for the Melbourne Cup, the so-called 'race which stops a nation', it's more of a no-holds-barred fashion approach. 

all images: steven meisel via vogue.it

Robyn Lawley strikes again - in Vogue Australia's first ever plus size fashion shoot

max doyle for vogue australia september 2011

On the occasion of her groundbreaking recent cover of Vogue Italia, alongside two other plus-sized models, we mentioned that Australia’s Robyn Lawley had another high fashion coup up her sleeve, just shot in Australia with Max Doyle. Frockwriter can reveal that that shoot is in fact a 10-page designer fashion editorial called 'Belle Curve' in the September edition of Vogue Australia, which is out on August 3rd. Subscriber copies landed today (thanks to our tipster who emailed the shots in). The editorial is accompanied by a double-page interview with Lawley. According to Kirstie Clements' editor's letter, this is the first time in Vogue Australia's 52-year history that the magazine has shot a plus-sized model for a fashion editorial. Hot on the heels of Lawley’s Vogue Italia cover and her Elle France cover in April, 2011 is turning out to be a banner year for Lawley, Bonner and the plus size-specialist modelling industry. 

Clements continues in her editor's letter:

“This is the first time Vogue Australia has shot a larger model and of course now that we have done it, I ask myself why we didn’t do it sooner. But that’s because Robyn is especially gorgeous. I went to the shoot to meet her and was transfixed by her beauty and poise. She is a truly super duper model. When a plus size model first turns up to the studio, she may be an anomaly to a team normally used to working with size 6’s, but once photographer Max Doyle started shooting Robyn, we quickly readjusted our preconceived notions of beauty. She doesn’t actually look plus size to me at all now. I said to a colleague on set later that day, “And men like curves don’t they?” He looked at me like I was an idiot. “Yes Kirsty, we certainly do” was his laconic reply. It’s an interesting conversation – the world of high fashion and fuller-figured women. One that needs to be continued”.

According to Lawley's Australian agent, Chelsea Bonner, the director of plus size-specialist agency Bella Model Management, the Vogue Australia editorial is an even sweeter victory than the Vogue Italia cover. 

“The amazing thing about the Vogue Australia shoot is that they actually dressed her - went out and found these beautiful designer garments to wear” Bonner told frockwriter. “Which just proves the point that there is clothing available for plus size models to wear in high fashion, it just takes a little bit of extra effort to find them. Vogue Australia went to that effort and the results are incredible”.

Of the rollercoaster media ride that ensued in the wake of the Italian cover, Bonner adds, “It went viral worldwide, has been commented on in I don’t know how many hundreds of magazines, blog sites and newspapers. And it reflects, I think, definitely the shift in consumers. Women want to see more realistic-sized models in magazines. They’re screaming for it. The response that we had from Italian Vogue was absolutely out of control. But my personal opinion is that Australian Vogue has blown Italian Vogue out of the water because of the fact that it is a true fashion editorial - rather than having curvy girls in lingerie, like they normally do. It’s not just having a token plus size model. It’s a true fashion editorial”.  

photographer: max doyle
fashion editor: meg gray
fashion assistant: megha kapoor
makeup: justine purdue
hair: renya xydis

"We need fashion to catch up to women of size" - Velvet d'Amour

steven meisel for vogue italia

Much has been written about this month’s Vogue Italia cover story of three plus sized models: Americans Tara Lynn and Candice Huffine and Australian Robyn Lawley. Frockwriter covered the story here. Above and below is the remainder of the accompanying fashion editorial. This edition has been hailed as a watershed moment in the body image debate by some, including Australian commentator Mia Freedman, the chair of Australia’s National Body Image Advisory Group, who noted: “Huzzah! An Australian size 14 is on the cover of Italian Vogue”. Others weren't quite so perky. “Topless plus size women equals empowerment?” asked womens’ advocate Melinda Tankard Reist. Some suggested the move was tokenistic. While others lamented the fact that the women had been photographed semi-nude in lingerie, which only served to reinforce, they noted, the sexualised cliché of larger women and porn. What says plus size icon Velvet d’Amour? 

Regular readers of my various blogs would know that Velvet is an American actor, model – and latterly, photographer - who lives in Paris. 

We first met after the Jean Paul Gaultier Spring/Summer 2007 show in Paris in October 2006, in which Velvet walked alongside Gemma Ward and other "straight"-sized models, generating headlines around the world. Gaultier's casting appeared to be a direct nod to fashion's latest skinny model debate, that had been sparked in August that year by the eating disorder-related death of Uruguayan model Luisel Ramos, which was swiftly followed by the deaths of two other South American models, including her sister Eliana. Velvet had previously walked for John Galliano. 

Here are the interviews I did with Velvet at smh.com.au and later at news.com.au. In the latter, which generated quite some heated (and at times abusive) commentary, Velvet talked about the flak she has copped from the plus size industry, which has always considered her far too big for its ranks. 

Here is her take on Vogue Italia's June issue, body diversity in high fashion imagery and the commonly-espoused theory that fashion's embrace of larger women encourages obesity:

maya guez via anna scholz

First off, congrats to your Aussie sister Robyn for scoring some great work of late. She and the models featured are definite beauties!

There is certainly a lot of talk about the Italian Vogue shoot. Mainstream folk seem to take offence to the fact that the models included are even deemed PLUS, when they are more ‘average’ size women, and others discuss a sense of exploitation, a lack of actual ‘fashion’, and then the inevitable health debate, while many are quite simply thrilled by it.

The way I see it is, that we need fashion to catch up to women of size, in order to make a stunning FASHION orientated editorial. If you were to take the average Vogue Italia editorial, and attempt to dress these same models in the clothes, best of luck to the stylist to find their size.

As to a sense of exploitation, or ‘soft porn’ feel, my sense is that our minds have been programmed via mainstream fashion to question FLESH. Fleshy, curvy women have been relegated to men’s magazines, whilst edgy editorial fashion in particular, has been inundating us with imagery glorifying adolescence (sometimes using models even as young as 13); the standard sample size forces the use of more skeletal models; and the opening of the Eastern bloc countries (where women are naturally quite delicately slender) caused an influx of lanky lovelies to grace the pages of our magazines and thus it’s really quite normal that the curves here are deemed as more risqué. We have been fed a steady diet of rail thin, white, tall, Youth for the most part. Thus instead of delving further into what Beauty means to us as individuals, the tendency is not to question authority. And VOGUE is certainly the pinnacle of authority when it comes to Fashion.

Yet were we to take what is the essence of the true meaning of FASHION in all likelihood it encompasses and revels in Change, in decadence, in obscurity versus ordinary, in risk-taking. While fashion beckons followers and innovation creates fashion, it’s those who deviate from accepted norms who create so much of our fashion from the get go. Fashion is innovative, tumultuous and it’s not meant to stagnate. Sameness is born of the dependence fashion magazines have on advertisers, who tend to be the very last people to take risk (due to the amount of money involved). It is this unlikely marriage of two opposing yet dependant components which has stagnated the blossoming of fashion, and in turn, its’ muses.

I have always been drawn to Steven Meisel’s photography and find these images equally stunning, though not particularly controversial in my opinion. I have stated on my own model portfolio (on the Model Mayhem website),
 

I'd say a good 99.999% of the artists interested in working with me wanna get me naked, not that I blame them, lol

It is quite the odd dichotomy that as a society, fat is viewed with derision, yet should one go out on a limb and include a genuinely voluptuous model, 9 times out of 10 they will do so by harkening back to the Renaissance. Rubens and the like, are seemingly our only reference point for a larger body.

Given I shoot as well, and certainly have photographed my fair share of nudes of all shapes and sizes, I understand the drive.

Were Herb Ritts to come back to life, I'd greet the boy starker’s.

I have posed nude for photographers like Daniele + Iango, Rancinan and in the film AVIDA, etc. thus I do not dismiss all tasteful nude propositions, but my main reason for modeling is in fact, as a political statement; that we need to diversify modern standards of beauty. If we continually marry the fat body with nude classics, then we are hardly creating a revolution. It's too easy in a sense, one gets a 'different' look and perhaps is praised for such, but if you really want to be revolutionary, then why not do a FASHION shoot with a bigger body versus pulling out the old Botticelli standard? 

As to the continuing Health debate, many a comment revolves around the message sent by using a woman of ‘size’, some stating the models are ‘obese’ and unhealthy, others fearful it will encourage people to be fat. The concept that fashion magazines are a reference guide of health to their viewers, seems only rarely pertinent on occasion, when we witness an exceptionally thin model, and inevitably whenever we possibly include a slightly curvy model. The reality that cultural pressures are one of the factors involved in eating disorders cannot be dismissed, though the notion that someone leafing through a magazine witnessing a plus size model has a sudden urge to down several thousand pizzas in the hopes of gaining a few pounds, is rather laughable at best. Were the inclusion of plus size models to spur viewers to gain weight, the inverse of that logic would mean (given the dearth of rail thin models in magazines), that the entire world would be emaciated, versus fat.

Time and again the issue of health is touted as a pertinent reason for the near total exclusion of fat women in modern media. Yet let’s have a look at who we utterly deify in popular culture, without questioning for a second their physical or mental health. Then ask yourself just how legitimate an argument it is to impose upon plus size models the responsibility of being the poster children for bonne santé, when we have no clue as to any model’s state of health when looking at her dancing through the pages of a magazine. Au contraire, we are well aware that a great number of popular actors, models, dancers, rock groups etc that inundate media have dabbled in drugs, drink,etc. And rather than scoff at them with derision and judgment, we fete them on a daily basis.

Avoiding fat people isn’t about health, it’s about Cool and un-cool.

My take on Cool is Diversity.

I don’t look to fashion magazines for advice on health, I look at them for fashion. We need to start looking beyond the simplistic and dig deeper. If you want to have a health debate, then let’s tackle mental health, which is the stimulus, more often than not, affecting s one’s physical health. If we start to include a major cross-section of our society within the revered pages of fashion magazines, fat women, emaciated women, women of colour, aging women, differently-abled women, small women, you name it - then we can turn the tide against the overwhelming sense so many women suffer from not being able to live up to this exceedingly stringent, highly unattainable beauty ethic we currently subscribe to.

- Velvet d'Amour 

 

all B/W images: steven meisel for vogue italia june 2011

LOVE in the time of dysmorphia

Frockwriter thought it seemed a little odd that Britain's Love magazine removed last Tuesday's shot of Australasian model Catherine McNeil from its Twitter feed. Originally published on the Condé Nast-owned magazine's TwitPic account (a photo hosting service connected to Twitter), together with the caption "Catherine McNeil is back!", the Tweet was nowhere to be found on Thursday. Coincidentally, earlier that day, we had published the original - apparently unretouched - series of digital shots of McNeil that were taken by McNeil's New York agency, Ford Models - and which had been supplied to Love earlier in the week. But while the shot slipped off Love's Twitter feed, the image had already been reposted by several web forums and blogs, including frockwriter and remains cached on Google images. Oh, and Love also neglected to remove it from the magazine's separate TwitPic feed. What's problematic about this shot? Could it have anything to do with the fact that a quick comparison of the two images suggests some Photoshop magic has been worked on McNeil's left arm? The version published by Love is on the left, above, with the original on the right. 

screen cap of LOVE magazine's twitpic

supplied by ford models

So, who retouched the image?

Difficult to say at this stage, given that neither Love editor Katie Grand nor Ford Models have responded to our communications. 

Just a reminder that McNeil, one of Australia's most high profile models, has been having a bit of a break from the modelling business for the past 12 months. According to Ford, however, McNeil is fit and high fashion-ready, having been "working really hard to get herself together. She's really determined". 

But apparently not sufficiently 'together' for Love's purposes. 

Clearly someone retouched the photo. If indeed it was Love, then of course by no stretch of the imagination would this be the only fashion magazine in the world to have manipulated an image to make a model or celebrity look thinner than she/he is in real life. It's the kind of endemic practice that has become a key focus of such charters and groups as Australia's National Advisory Group on Body Image, whose voluntary industry code of practice recommends the disclosure of all digital retouching. 

Meanwhile, Katie Grand's peers are dedicating more and more space to special body image-focussed editions. 

The June edition of Vogue Italia stars three plus-sized models and separately, Vogue Italia editor Franza Sozzani has launched a petition to combat pro-anorexia websites that encourage young women to be competitive about their body shape. The magazine claims to be attempting to promote healthy beauty standards and to help impress upon young women that being skinny does not equal being perfect.

Robyn Lawley covers Vogue Italia

steven meisel for vogue italia via bella model management

When Australian Robyn Lawley recently landed the cover of ELLE France's 'curvy' issue, frockwriter mentioned that she had just been shot for the June edition of another, even more prestigious European title by one of the biggest names in fashion photography. They don't come much bigger than Vogue Italia and Steven Meisel. Congratulations to Lawley, who appears on the June 2011 cover of Vogue Italia (above, far right) with two other plus-sized models, Tara Lynn and Candice Huffine. Lawley, an Australian size 14, is also prominently featured inside the issue, in the remainder of the Meisel-lensed cover story (see another shot, below), but also in an only-girl editorial shot by Pierpaulo Ferrari (see further down for three behind-the-scenes images from that shoot, taken by Lawley). Lawley has more high fashion gigs on the horizon, having just shot with Max Doyle back home in Australia.  

steven meisel for vogue italia via bella model management

“It [the Vogue cover] just makes the last nine years of my life all worth it" says Lawley's mother agent Chelsea Bonner, the director of plus-size specialist agency Bella Model Management. "I could drop dead right now and I’d be so happy. I don’t know how I'm ever going to top it. It’s just a complete validation of what I've been trying to say for the last nine years: that curves and high fashion do work. And given the same opportunities as any other model gets, the result is just as beautiful, just as amazing, just as glamorous. To be given that sort of opportunity and for Robyn to blow it out of the water like she has, it’s proof that it can be done and it should on on a regular basis". 

Regarding Lawley's legs akimbo pose on the Vogue cover, according to Bonner, Meisel asked Lawley to sit (words to the effect), "How you would sit if you were a really powerful person".  

As for the flak prompted by Bonner's comments on our last Lawley post in April - when Bonner said she has yet to meet a size 22 woman who is healthy -  she notes, "I thought it was interesting that I’m not allowed to have an opinion when Bella is completely my opinion. The whole business is my opinion of beauty and what works and doesn’t work and what the market wants. So if anyone should be allowed to have an opinion, it should be me. We did have a lot of controversy over that and even on our Facebook page. But we had doctors, nutritionists and psychologists writing in and every single one agreed with my statement". 

all three images: pierpaulo ferrari for vogue italia, BTS shot by robyn lawley

It is reportedly 11 years since Vogue Italia last featured a plus-size model on its cover - Sophie Dahl. 

But the body image issue appears to be gathering momentum at the high fashion title. 
 
In February last year, Vogue Italia launched a plus-size-dedicated microsite called Vogue Curvy.

Then in March this year, editor Franza Sozzani launched a petition to combat pro-anorexia websites. 

In a letter to readers on the Vogue Italia website, Sozzani noted [her bold type emphasis]: 

"I did some research and found that there are countless pro-anorexia websites and blogs that not only support the disorder, but also urge young people to be competitive about their “body shape”.

 

Vogue Italia, the magazine par excellence that deals with and promotes aesthetics and beauty, has decided to make use of its authority and its readers on the web (over one million of contacts per month), to battle against anorexia and collect signatures with the final goal of shutting such sites down.


Fashion has been always blamed as one of the culprits of anorexia, and our commitment is the proof that fashion is ready to get on the frontline and struggle against the disorder."

   

Underneath Sozzani's letter, Associazione Bulimia Anoressia founder Fabiola de Clerq added:

"It is of paramount importance to explain teenage girls that being skinny does not equal being perfect and to promote beauty standards which start from and are all about being healthy".

Frockwriter couldn't help chuckling after reading these mission statements. 

Ninety-nine percent of the time, of course, Vogue Italia's models are whippet-thin, many struggling to keep their weight down to satisfy the draconian requirements of the industry's top casting directors, photographers, designers, stylists and magazine editors.

And any model who dares put on a few pounds can expect to be shown the door. 

The transvestite issue

brett lloyd for candy via boy lloyd

Frockwriter has little doubt that US Vogue editrix double act Anna Wintour and Grace Coddington have seen more than their fair share of homages in smoky drag dives over the years – notably since the release of R.J Cutler's 2009 frockumentary The September Issue. But thanks to Luis Venegas, editor and publisher of the world’s first so-called “transversal style magazine” Candy, their tranny doppelgängers have made it to print. In the hilarious editorial The Devil Wears Anna in Candy's second edition, Spanish natives Venegas and model/DJ/musician Andrès Borque channel Wintour and Coddington respectively. While elsewhere in the story, other female impersonators take on Vogue Italia editor Franca Sozzani, teen blogger Tavi Gevinson and others. The images are interspersed with pre-published or –broadcast quotes pulled from sources such as 60 Minutes and Venegas’ own Fanzine 137. Only 1000 copies of each issue of Candy are printed and although this edition was launched in October, the images have only just been uploaded by photographer Brett Lloyd. Thanks to Homotography for spotting them. It's not the first time Venegas and Borque have paid homage to Vogue's editor and creative director. They attended Candy's November 2009 launch party as the duo (see end).

all images (above): brett lloyd for candy via boy lloyd

andres borque and luis venegas, november 2009/fashion's most wanted