Can you imagine the explosion that might have occured inside the brain of Your Average Seventeenth Century Man had he seen a photograph like the ones above? This kind of woman, at least in this particular sci-fi-ish guise, hadn’t been invented yet (while this docile Grecian eunuch type, or whatever, is clearly a throwback to the time when Grecian eunuchs roamed the earth looking to indenture themselves to queenly dominatrixes); it would have seemed as outlandish, to that man I’m imagining, as, well, a photograph. Of course, there still has never been a woman as intimidatingly bold and sexy as the one (or two) pictured above, though Christy Turlington does a great impression considering, especially in the photo on the left: a woman who will neither move nor speak but will never be left alone, whose hair the wind will never let fall, whose body will always be fresh and rubbery, not a crease anywhere, ever. In other words, the ideal fashion advertisement fiction.
These pictures are all from the famous 1994 Versace campaign photographed by Richard Avedon. Versace and Avedon did a lot of brilliantly fruity work together (I’m kind of into this 1993 series which reminds me of nothing so much as Henri Rousseau), but the 94 set is probably the most highly-regarded. Only one other ad campaign has made such an impression on me: the 2001 Prada campaign in which everything was sterile beige and black, and that one by doing exactly the opposite of this one, voiding out the color, the carnality (though it does have its own peculiar sexiness), and the playfulness.
I remember this campaign vividly from a Versace booklet that, if I got it where I think I did, had made it all the way to what was considered to be the upscale fashion retailer in the small prairie town where I grew up. It was either that or I found it at a shopping mall in the marginally bigger town of Brandon, Manitoba (pop. 43,000), a megalopolis to me at the time. However I got it, the pictures in it seemed as exaggeratedly “hot” as anything I’d ever seen or could hope to see. But I also sensed, even then, something abstract and knowingly ridiculous in them - these brainless, oversexed (but distracted) elves and fairies that, had I been a little older, I might have recognized from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, if not Ovid.
Everything reminds me of A Midsummer Night’s Dream now. I’m kind of obsessed by representations of it and tend to see echos of its pagan playground imagery everywhere. In this case, they’re probably echos of echos, vaguely resonanting configurations of tone and content we can’t help but repeat, but it’s still a clear enough chain of allusion for me. I wouldn’t want to try to draw direct parallels; if anything, Versace and Avedon would have been inspired by the Greek and Roman models, not Shakespeare, and a lot of the photos, I should say, don’t have anything to do with the theme at all, but in those that do, the men and women strike me as being a kind of balled-up composite of Midsummer types, with a garnish of 80s reverb in the form of brightly-colored skirts and leather overalls thrown in on top.
Footnote: look at Claudia Schiffer here. She was such a big girl. Just sixteen years ago, a model had something like hips, something like thighs, and - behold! - the suggestion of a tummy peaking out above her skirt. …And big hair, and big lips! This kind of beauty - the healthy-looking kind - is as out of fashion as gold jackets. I admit to missing it.
Can you imagine the explosion that might have occured inside the brain of Your Average Seventeenth Century Man had he seen a photograph like the ones above? This kind of woman, at least in this particular sci-fi-ish guise, hadn’t been invented yet (while this docile Grecian eunuch type, or whatever, is clearly a throwback to the time when Grecian eunuchs roamed the earth looking to indenture themselves to queenly dominatrixes); it would have seemed as outlandish, to that man I’m imagining, as, well, a photograph. Of course, there still has never been a woman as intimidatingly bold and sexy as the one (or two) pictured above, though Christy Turlington does a great impression considering, especially in the photo on the left: a woman who will neither move nor speak but will never be left alone, whose hair the wind will never let fall, whose body will always be fresh and rubbery, not a crease anywhere, ever. In other words, the ideal fashion advertisement fiction.
These pictures are all from the famous 1994 Versace campaign photographed by Richard Avedon. Versace and Avedon did a lot of brilliantly fruity work together (I’m kind of into this 1993 series which reminds me of nothing so much as Henri Rousseau), but the 94 set is probably the most highly-regarded. Only one other ad campaign has made such an impression on me: the 2001 Prada campaign in which everything was sterile beige and black, and that one by doing exactly the opposite of this one, voiding out the color, the carnality (though it does have its own peculiar sexiness), and the playfulness.
I remember this campaign vividly from a Versace booklet that, if I got it where I think I did, had made it all the way to what was considered to be the upscale fashion retailer in the small prairie town where I grew up. It was either that or I found it at a shopping mall in the marginally bigger town of Brandon, Manitoba (pop. 43,000), a megalopolis to me at the time. However I got it, the pictures in it seemed as exaggeratedly “hot” as anything I’d ever seen or could hope to see. But I also sensed, even then, something abstract and knowingly ridiculous in them - these brainless, oversexed (but distracted) elves and fairies that, had I been a little older, I might have recognized from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, if not Ovid.
Everything reminds me of A Midsummer Night’s Dream now. I’m kind of obsessed by representations of it and tend to see echos of its pagan playground imagery everywhere. In this case, they’re probably echos of echos, vaguely resonanting configurations of tone and content we can’t help but repeat, but it’s still a clear enough chain of allusion for me. I wouldn’t want to try to draw direct parallels; if anything, Versace and Avedon would have been inspired by the Greek and Roman models, not Shakespeare, and a lot of the photos, I should say, don’t have anything to do with the theme at all, but in those that do, the men and women strike me as being a kind of balled-up composite of Midsummer types, with a garnish of 80s reverb in the form of brightly-colored skirts and leather overalls thrown in on top.
Footnote: look at Claudia Schiffer here. She was such a big girl. Just sixteen years ago, a model had something like hips, something like thighs, and - behold! - the suggestion of a tummy peaking out above her skirt. …And big hair, and big lips! This kind of beauty - the healthy-looking kind - is as out of fashion as gold jackets. I admit to missing it.
