Penn; Flowers

Not Sean! Although I will forgive you for thinking that. Here we're talking about Irving, and here we're talking about flowers. Glorious, glorious flowers. As one commenter said on a random forum "nice lighting, good photos". Quite.

Saw these beauties in the Diana Vreeland documentary (which, if anything, has taught me it's deeee-anna, not die-anna) during one of the many swooping shots of opened magazine pages. In most of those shots I dived for the pause button - if only Harper's Bazaar had an online archive like Vogue...
But gawd I mean really. These were commissioned for a fashion magazine? Not to put fashion magazines down, but goodness that's radical. Including original work from a fine artist, even one who works most of the time in fashion photography, would be unthinkable in most major monthlies these days. It was unthinkable back then! But that's what makes Vreeland the visionary she was.

Voila! Des fleurs! (Les fleurs? Whatever)

images from all over the show, but original source is late sixties, early seventies issues of Vogue

Art and Fashion #4

This one could definitely be filed under 'philosophy and fashion' or 'architecture and fashion' too. Grace Coddington sure loves her editorials steeped in art history, and this one is a bonanza of references. Constructivism, Bauhaus, Cubism, and most of all it seems Futurism - especially since it mentioned "a dash of 1920s utopia".
It is a well known fact for those who know me personally that I really, really don't like Futurism. I dislike this movement so much, a movement carried out by sinister Italian men in the 1920s and focused on machines and movement and, yes, the future, that on a recent trip to the Tate I went out of my way to specifically pose for photos with unimpressed facial expressions beside Boccioni's walking Man Sculpture. I do, however, like Le Corbusier, even though his 1920s utopian plans for the future failed miserably - which is worse than them not ever coming to fruition at all. Since I've brought it up, before we look at the Vogue spread, let's have a wee look at Corbusier-esque "utopias", shall we?

Le Corbusier's original dream, Plan Voisin. Terrifying. 

Failure Number One: Unite d'Habitation
Lowdown: Orignially created by Corbusier as an apartment-block community for those left homeless after WWII. Cost too much to build so apartments ended up being sold to yuppies.

Failure Number Two: Pruitt-Igoe
Lowdown: 1950s urban housing development from St Louis, Missouri in the spirit of Le Courbusier's utopian communities. Turned into a slum and was demolished by the 70s (watch this documentary about it!)

Failure Number Three: Cabrini Green
Lowdown: Basically a Chicago version of Pruitt-Igoe. A poster child for a specific strain of American woe. The last building in the complex was demolished only last year!

Of course the architecture we're looking at in this editorial is closer to Bauhaus than to these Corbusier-esque housing complexes, but Vogue mentioned "1920s Utopias", not me. And there are also plenty of high-brow references to things such as Constructivism and Picasso and Cocteau. And the result of all of this? Well it's kind of creepy and off to be honest - but there's something so non-Vogue and generally wrong about it all that I really like it. I loved the colours, have a love/hate relationship with the architecture, thought the clothes were somewhat bad but it all works out. Fassbender doesn't hurt either of course.

Editorial images from vogue.com

Lookin' Good Stone

little dude's kinda annoying though.
Thanks vogue.com!

Architecture and Fashion

Architecture and fashion are two things that are always on my mind, but I got thinking about them in relation to each other recently after re-reading an amazing editorial that Vogue made with Arizona Muse. They've popped her out in the Mojave Desert in Arizona (of course), in a sparse, minimal house that is all glass and concrete. The reason that the editorial works so well is that the clothes aesthetically match the architecture. They are minimal with clean, striking lines and the fabrics also have a pretty earthy, linen-y feel. I guess you could label it 90s minimalism and classic American sportswear but it seems much fresher than that. Although I guess poor old Narciso Rodriguez will never escape the 90s...
This shoot is also a magnificent example of stylist Tonne Goodman at her best. I'm the first to admit that she can produce some really atrocious celebrity shoots, but when she focuses on American sportswear and minimal dressing for powerful women, man that lady is good.

And this editorial made even more sense when Goodman released a sort of 'favourite things' for Vogue, and photographer Louise Dahl-Wolfe was included.

Tom Ford's a big fan of, well lots of things but architecture is one of them (he's one of those men that appreciates things isn't he? Do you know the kind of man that I mean? The kind that feels he has a great a amount of power because he enjoys great things). The John Lautner house in A Single Man had so much screen time it was almost a character in itself. And he is the lucky owner of of a Tadao Ando designed house, which was shot really beautifully for Paris Vogue.

Architectural photography is so often very impersonal (bar World of Interiors, of course!), and so fashion photography is fantastic in making it seem more exciting and dynamic, even when you're meant to focus on the clothes first and the building second. You'd think fashion photography would create watered down reproductions of architecture but instead I think it invigorates it, and of course distributes it to a wider audience.

Side note: you know what's great? The fact that US Vogue puts up selected editorials on their website in really really good quality. It's just so nice of them.

                                                        US Vogue and Louise Dahl-Wolfe photos from vogue.com