45 posts tagged “fashion magazine”

I thought this was awesome news in that the photographer, Giuliano Bekor, shot regularly for Lucire. From the Lucire ‘Insider’ section.

Giuliano Bekor, whose credits include numerous Lucire shoots, photographed Hayden Panettiere for her 2008 Candie’s print campaign.

Hayden Panettiere will star in Candie’s back to school 2008 television, print and online advertising campaign, according to the company. Hayden, who is known as an award-winning actress, activist and star of NBC’s hit television series Heroes can now add recording artist to her résumé.
   Following last year’s marketing campaign with Grammy-award winning artist Fergie, the new fall TV commercial will be a direct lift from Panettiere’s first music video, ‘Wake Up Call’, which was styled using Candie’s apparel, footwear and accessories.
   This is Panettiere’s second season with the brand.
   To coincide with TV, a print campaign will feature Panettiere in a variety of sexy and sweet vignettes as she playfully poses with a piano, behind a beaded curtain and in a club-like setting among others. The ‘Wake Up Call’ video and the Candie’s commercial were shot in Los Angeles by famed music video director Chris Applebaum and the print campaign was shot by fashion photographer Giuliano Bekor, whose credits include Lucire, and created by the Iconix in-house marketing team.
   Fans can listen to ‘Wake Up Call’ exclusively at www.candies.com and www.kohls.com/inspire (streaming only) beginning today. The single will be available for download on iTunes beginning August 5. The single is being released by Hollywood Records.

I enjoy these behind-the-scenes design stories a lot, and check out the video of the designer drawing the new BMW 7-series (F01). From Lucire.

Since I posted about the use of the word coon on radio in New Zealand, I did get a reply from the plumbing firm which it advertised.
   It was very short:

It is raccoons the ones in the woods. Of course there is no limit to the number of interpretations.

   Fair enough: we now know the intent. I would have written more in response (e.g. signed the thing with my name), but that is another issue. I still wonder if the alternative, racist interpretation was in the back of the copywriter’s mind. I guess we won’t know.
   However, every time I have talked about this radio commercial, most people are shocked. No one seems to come up with the raccoon explanation. It’s a 100 per cent response to the notion that the advertisement is racist.
   Sure, this is nowhere near scientific. I must have mentioned it to about 15 people. That’s hardly representative of the population. And on this blog, opinion was divided among an international audience.
   A check back then did reveal that the word was also a racist term used to describe Aboriginals in Australia by certain Australians, and it came up again when Lucire covered Naomi Campbell’s sentence last Friday.:

Capt Doug Maughan, a pilot of 28 years, had filed a complaint [against British Airways] after the use of the word coon during a training session. He also claimed Saudi Arabians were referred to as ‘rag-heads’ on one flight.

   This was in relation to Campbell allegedly being called a ‘gollywog supermodel’ by airline staff.
   In this context I don’t think I was being too sensitive, since I get the feeling the racist interpretation is more commonplace than the animal one, even in the British Commonwealth.
   It’s hard to believe the ‘gollywog’ comment, too. Campbell’s words could have been dismissed if it had not been for Capt Maughan’s own evidence that British Airways allegedly, and casually, used racist epithets. (The airline denies the allegations.)
   I won’t add more as I think the two points of view were well covered in the earlier post’s comments.

[Cross-posted] Yves Saint Laurent’s passing is such a shock to the fashion media because he was the world’s greatest couturier.
   When we broke the news on Sunday night at Lucire, it was obvious that we were marking the end of an era.
   The casual observer might say that the end occurred in 2002, when Saint Laurent retired to his house in Marrakech. But while he remained alive, there was always that link to one of fashion’s pure geniuses.
   Saint Laurent, perhaps like Mozart, did not have formal training when he created clothes for his sister and mother. He was talented enough to be accepted into the Chambre Syndicale. When he created the trapèze look at Dior in 1958, he was not following some great marketing-trend projection. Nor were brand advisers present with studies about liberating women when he gave the world le smoking or the safari look.
   It was only with hindsight that we, the media, made the connections for him, hiding the real inspirations that he had in his quest to become France’s greatest couturier.
   The great irony is that as his influence grew, so did the YSL brand, which meant his name became so tied up with marketing, business, financial projections and trend forecasts.
   While that brought Saint Laurent wealth, it was always clear that he was happiest simply being a créateur. It was a sign that it was better to preside over a genuine maison de l’amour than seeing if money bought happiness.
   His passing perhaps marks the demise of a pure couturier who drew from something within, finding the essence not only of his muses, such as Catherine Deneuve, but of himself.
   Today’s couturiers, while incredibly talented, are also more calculated and savvy. Saint Laurent could leave the calculations and savvy to his lover and company president, Pierre Bergé.
   I am not saying one method is better than the other. But I do miss that era where we praised Saint Laurent because he was simply so good at what he did, setting the Zeitgeist for the simple reason that he did not watch the Zeitgeist.
   Today’s designers, such as Gaultier and Ford, and even to an extent Saint Laurent’s contemporary, Lagerfeld, have a more balanced outlook, which obviously have kept them away from the down sides of Saint Laurent’s behaviour: his severe depression and his reclusiveness, especially during the 1980s.
   It is also Yves Saint Laurent the recluse, the victim of school bullying, the man who saw himself as a latter-day Swann, that also makes today’s story all the more compelling. But again, it hides that single-minded desire, one which few of us would dare to do because we know of its personal cost.
   When President Sarkozy made him an Officier of the Legion d’Honneur, the title of ‘hero’ wasn’t inappropriate for Saint Laurent.
   He is a hero for that reason, and he has set the bar so high that it will take an extraordinary person to beat his record.
   The Proust connection—Saint Laurent as Swann, by his own reckoning—does point to how he saw himself, cast out by society. It is invalid, because we are all the poorer now.
   We have lost one of the purest designers; one fewer great figure on whom we can not only report, but bask in his genius.

Interestingly, the MSM has not broken this yet, though the story has been floating about for a few days. Odds are it will break Friday. Already on the Lucire ‘Insider’ blog as an op-ed.

Shoegate: Sarah Riley, Trelise Cooper in payment dispute
It’s another case of ‘She said / She said’ in the fashion world, and Trelise Cooper’s name has come up again.
   This time, footwear designer Sarah Riley is accusing Trelise Cooper Ltd. of not paying in full for supplied stock.
   On Riley’s side, there might be some hope out there that people remember Trelise Cooper Ltd. for its lawsuit against Tamsin Cooper, and that the media are prepared to align the latest case with this. That time, there was arguably more “underdog” support for the smaller Tamsin Cooper label, with the exception of a TV One news item that went off-topic by questioning Tamsin Cooper’s materials.
   The case is, after all, still talked about in the media—not always in the most glowing terms for the larger design company.
   However, after Trelise Cooper Ltd. itself became a potential defendant facing similar accusations from a company marketing its products under the Treliske trade mark, some might believe that karma has followed its natural path and the slate has been wiped clean.
   So what are the arguments?
   Riley says that Cooper owes NZ$23,000. The release, from Mint Condition Ltd., says Riley ‘has fallen victim to the foibles of designer and retailer Trelise Cooper.’
   It has affected Riley so much that her winter 2008 and summer 2009 collections have had to be cancelled, says the release.
   This time around, Trelise Cooper Ltd. has employed a publicist, perhaps one lesson learned from the Tamsin Cooper case.
   The company, through its general manager Alex Brandon, dismisses Riley’s accusations, saying that the supplied goods were faulty.
   ‘TCL [Trelise Cooper Ltd.] received a delivery from Sarah Riley in September 2007. After only two days on the shop floor TCL were alerted by customers and staff to numerous quality issues.’
   Riley, in her defence, has had one retailer, Mei Mei in Ponsonby, Auckland, attest to the quality of her products. ‘Eight years in the business, I’ve had more problems with returns on Jimmy Choo heels!’ says Mei Mei’s Jo Pearson.
   Trelise Cooper Ltd. attempted to return the stock but it was not accepted by Riley—on this point the parties agree.
   Brandon says Trelise Cooper Ltd. paid Riley ‘on delivery of the shoes $23,838 [up front] of a total invoice of $47,677.’
   This is a more routine commercial case, so the “bullying” aspect that Tamsin Cooper supporters saw in 2005–7 isn’t as apparent. One company is bigger than the other, but in our view the sympathy heartstrings are harder to pull, especially as the first stone has been cast in the media by the smaller one.
   There are useful precedents over the quality and sale of goods in the courts already, as well as many governing part-payment. These cases that tend to be less fascinating than those surrounding intellectual property—or brands.
   At the end of the day, both sides have a varying idea over the quality of the product, and this is what any case will rest on.
   Did Sarah Riley supply shoes of a merchantable quality to Trelise Cooper Ltd.? Were there clauses in the sale of goods’ contract governing quality and payment?
   The story has not yet broken in the mainstream media but we expect it will be more an arm’s-length commercial battle rather than David v. Goliath when it does.
   We at Lucire hope the parties can settle their differences without resorting to the courts.

Monarch in the garden, May 2008 1

Monarch in the garden, May 2008 2

I have had a record number of monarchs in my garden this year. This one was on one of my paths, and let me come up real close. They were actually from April, not May as the captions state.
   Earlier today, when attending a photo shoot for Lucire, what did I spot among the props?

Buoy anniversary shoot for Lucire 2

[Cross-posted] Vogue’s April 2008 cover with the Cleveland Cavaliers’ LeBron James and Gisèle Bündchen has been branded by some as being racist. As noted by the Plain Dealer over in Cleveland, Ohio:

LeBron shares the April cover of Vogue magazine with supermodel Gisele Bundchen. It’s been noted by some that his open-mouthed screaming face and the way he is cradling a blond woman in his left hand has racial overtones in its resemblance to an old movie poster of King Kong and captive Fay Wray. Vogue says it chose the photo because it’s “expressive, fun and upbeat.”

   Once I got over the bad typography, I had to wonder if this cover furthers stereotypes. Being a minority, I personally didn’t make the connection that Margaret Bernstein and Sarah Crump reported on above. If I imagined the races switched, I also didn’t get much of a reaction—except to note that it would have been unusual for Vogue to feature a woman of colour on its cover, let alone a man of any colour.
   However, I wondered: would a black man who isn’t a basketball player have made it? Or one who isn’t dressed as such?
   I don’t think it’s necessarily the pose, but whether there is a stereotype at play here. While Mr James has his own line of clothes—which he is modelling in the cover photograph—would a cover showing him in more conservative attire have been chosen?
   One blogger gave other examples, and reacted to the photograph:

A tuxedoed LeBron James out on the town with a stylish Gisele photo shoot would do. A Lebron on a couch with a magazine full of him and Gisele on the same couch with a magazine full of her; signifiers that they are man and woman at the top of their professions photo shoot would do. Or, the two in full nightclub gear with him watching her trying to dribble in the low light of an empty Quicken Arena. The possibilities are endless.
   And yet LeBron James allowed himself to be captured interminably not as the King James of his profession and rising player in the business world, but as a human King Kong, The Great Nigger whose fame is inextricably tied to how proficiently he puts a leather ball through an iron hoop.

   Others rebutted:

Calling it a modern-day interpretation of King Kong and Fay Wray, Feministe website writer Ali Eteraz referred to the image by Annie Leibovitz as “King James Turned Into King Kong.” She also said the cover “fulfills every racist stereotype in the world: primal screaming, white-girl carrying, black beast.”
   Are they seeing something that has escaped the rest of us? It’s the “Shape Issue,” remember? The contrast of the 6-foot-9 James and 5-foot-11 Bundchen seems like nothing more than an innocent pop culture poke at celebrity. Do we really need to read more into it?
   As for the comparison to poor Fay Wray, does anyone see Bundchen looking remotely stressed in this shot?

   James is the third man to appear on a cover of Vogue (after Richard Gere and George Clooney), and the publisher has defended its choice because it is an issue devoted to size and shape. From the Associated Press:

“Nobody says more about fashion size and shape than Gisele and LeBron,” Vogue spokesman Patrick O’Connell said. “LeBron is an amazing star and athlete that has crossed over into a cultural phenomena.”

   To me (being neither black nor white), the King Kong connection, isn’t obvious—but the idea of “the black American good only on the basketball court” seems to be cemented here. Sad, in a year where Americans could be voting in their first black president.
   Whatever the case, Vogue seems to have benefited hugely from the publicity, from the blogosphere and sports’ fans who might never have commented on the magazine.

I’m sure this website is breaking some copyright laws, unless the owners of these magazines have allowed their content to be put online. You can never tell with Red China.
   Still, from a consumer point-of-view, it makes for an interesting research resource, and how Red China has opened up since Mao.
   We are talking some amazing, thick volumes here—fashionistas should check this out.

[Cross-posted] H&M has been collaborating with top labels such as Stella McCartney and Roberto Cavalli for a while, and now, Adidas has launched its co-branded line with Diesel. Last year, we checked out the Diesel fragrances, and we’ve covered the jeans for ages, so this does seem to be the brand’s period in the Zeitgeist.
   Sold via Adidas Originals stores, the spring–summer Originals Denim by Diesel range includes two male and two female models presented in four different washes, beginning this month. Prices range from US$160 for the female Adi-rohnary model up to US$210 for the male Adi-viker model. Representing this long-term partnership, the range is branded by both the Adidas Originals Trefoil and the Diesel logo.
   Below are videos from the launch party in New York, and interviews with Diesel’s Renzo Rosso and Adidas’ Sport Style division CMO Hermann Deininger.