Take Note
Iconoclast designer Elsa Schiaparelli is most remembered for infusing a sense of wit and irony into her designs through surreal touches. Schiaparelli’s Fall 1939 music-themed collection celebrated music, quite literally, with drum-shaped button closures, embroidered musical notes and music boxes designed into belts and hats. This particular dress, owned by heiress
Lace Faced
To commemorate her transition out of silent films and into talkies, Edward Steichen photographed American actress Gloria Swanson in 1924. A pioneer in the field of fashion photography, Steichen would build a prolific body of work capturing the glamour of Hollywood’s Golden Age. In Swanson’s portrait, Steichen suspended a piece of black
Surf the Net
The beach was a frequent mise-en-scène for Herb Ritts photographs, which often featured nude, sometimes gowned, statuesque women emerging from the ocean or sprawled out amongst the sand. In 1987, Herb–short for Herbert–would photograph Danish model Brigitte Nielsen on a beach in Malibu. Swathed in a fisherman’s net, she appears a
Strike Gold
Fashion Editor turned photographer Deborah Turbeville, who recently passed this last October, is remembered for her grainy, soft-focused images that depicted and above all celebrated women. Ultra-femme with an underlying darkness, Turbeville’s work would make its way into the pages of Mademoiselle and Vogue by the 1970s. For the August 1st,
Well Heeled
Long before Terry Richardson’s overt, unabashedly sexy and borderline-pornographic photographs, were those by David Bailey, Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin. Employing sex as a shock-factor to emulate one of the finest paris escorts in fashion photography is not a recent phenomena and evident in the work of even the most