Vogue Italia July 2008 : Liya, Sessilee, Jourdan & Naomi by Steven Meisel

[Lackuiew]

Sesilee is surprisingly beautiful in every shot so far , I never know her before i saw this issue . Jourdan is super awesome . And I'm laughing up my sleeve that i don't see Chanel on the cover , IMO she's kinda plain !!!! Naomi on the cover is a bit old , but ed - the Prada outfit-is amazing .

[alix*]

Am I the only who doesn't find the covers that great?

Sure Sesilee's one is brilliant, but the other three are less than mediocre. How dissapointing.

[OMIFAN9]

Originally Posted by Aby

Unless you mean as a memorial, Katoucha died a few months ago...

I've been waiting for this thread for a few days now and the number of reactions to this thread is so huge, it's great and also sad that it comes to this to see Black models in a mainstream mag.

I think many people know she's dead so I didn't mean as in a New edit or something...that would be kinda crazy. I was sleepy when I was typing last time but not that sleepy,jokes. BUT I meant as something,a memorandum or something. I mean that Tyra pic I don't think is modern...I've seen it before I believe. So all the photos inside I bet aren't new.

[spiceboy]

wow i love how Tyra is more white than a white person, and its a black issue! stunning!*irony*

[Yellowstar09]

Loves it. I may have to search for this issue. Thank you so much for posting.

[Spike413]

These photos, and especially the cover, are proof that Sesilee has gone underrated for TOO long.

The girl is positively stunning, and I've loved her feline gaze and perfect pout ever since she cropped her hair and started doing shows.

I really do hope this catapults her a bit more.

I don't even care very much about models under most circumstances, but between the lineup of girls that they have and how gorgeous the first round of pictures is I can't wait to see more!

[OMIFAN9]

Originally Posted by Marcel

I just counted what FMD said but they don't even list her French Vogue covers so I guess you as a Naomi fan know better

Wow,thats sooo off...they should fix it,jokes. But yes as a big fan I've seen them. I bet even a non-fan could,more than likely could find at least 35 of them easily.

[sethii]

wow i love how Tyra is more white than a white person, and its a black issue! stunning!*irony*

that's just one picture - and it looks like the white makeup it for an artistic effect not to actually make people think her skin is lighter.

All of the editorials portray the models as characters which are familiar to a european audience - very bourgeois chic - not as people who are exotic and wild. Here they are being treated the same as european models. Contrast this with the time Numero did an all black editorial; the models wore leapord print and pulled animalistic poses, in what looked like it could be a jazz club.

Meisel

[PoppyAzura]

Originally Posted by sethii

club.

Meisel

Ditto sister (or brother)! Still hoping Kinee will show up in the line up.

[MissMagAddict]

Source | The New York Times | Cathy Horyn's Blog

Beauty & Soul
As some of you may have heard through the grape vine, the July issue of Italian Vogue will have only black models, and all the features are related to black women in the arts and
entertainment.

Considering the displays of tokenism on the runways last season—Jourdan Dunn at Prada, and in only one look—an entire issue devoted to black models could be seen as making hay of a controversy. I’ll let you be the judge. The issue will be on newsstands in Europe next Thursday, and after in the States. Steven Meisel did the fashion pictures, about 100 in all, and I think they are some of the best he’s done. They are crazily, softly beautiful, plainly the work of someone who knows women and fashion, has looked at both a long time, and when I spoke to Meisel the other day—I admitted I didn’t recognize Tyra Banks in one of the portraits. She’s wearing a soft head wrap, and her head is tilted back.

Meisel laughed and, describing the session, said, “That was, like, 10 minutes. She sat at the window. Guido”—Guido Palau, the hairstylist—“wrapped her hair. I’m exaggerating, it took an hour. But, no, that’s Tyra.”

Among the other models in the issue are Iman, Naomi Campbell, Alek Wek, Liya Kebede, Pat Cleveland, Jourdan Dunn, Sessilee Lopez, Chanel Iman, Veronica Webb, and Karen Alexander. Meisel, I think, has worked with all of them before. When you see how he has photographed Lopez, for instance—in a neat brocade turban, in a veiled hat evocative of chic Saint Laurent—you are forced to ask yourself why this beautiful woman isn’t working more than she is. Meisel suggests that the reason, and the answer to the problem of diversity on the runway, is simple: “Because nobody gives her a chance.” Of course, it helps if you can see the potential in Lopez in the first place.

I talked to a number of people for the piece, including Franca Sozzani (a Q & A with her follows), Campbell, Webb, Bethann Hardison, and the casting agent Ashley Brokaw, who had a lot of interesting things to say. Part of the problem, as Brokaw sees it, is that the agencies aren’t taking the time and trouble to develop models, white and nonwhite. And, then, the cycle of new models, especially from Eastern Europe, is cycling faster and faster. Brokaw says she sees 15 new girls every season, compared with maybe two in the past. That automatically makes it difficult for a model to build a career.

Hardison, who is a kind of advocate for integration on the runway and in magazines, puts a lot of the blame with the agencies. They are simply not making the effort to find and develop young models. I tried to reach Chanel Iman through Ford, to speak to her about the Italian Vogue shoot, and another model through IMG. But no one at either agency returned my calls
Campbell and Kebede are hopeful that the Vogue issue will have an impact. (By the way, American Vogue has a piece in the July issue, out this week, about the dearth of black models.)

Kebede, who is in Germany making a film, sent this email:

Last season there were a couple more black models on the runway than usual, which was so wonderful to see. But, then again, I don’t know if this will continue or if it will die as soon as the media stops dedicating attention to this issue. I really hope that we are turning a chapter here.

I also got a wonderful email from Edward Enniful, the stylist, who worked with Campbell and Meisel on the shoot—and with Pat McGrath, who did all the makeup for the issue, and Palau. Enniful is in Milan for the men’s shows. I had asked him what the session, in Los Angeles, was like.

Naomi Campbell is one of my best friends. She is from Streatham in South London. Pat McGrath is also one of my best friends. She comes from Northampton in England. I am from Ladbroke Grove, in London. Put three very vocal black Brits together, add a North London hairdresser, Guido Palau, and stir with New Yorker Steven Meisel, and what do you get? A very, very loud shoot. We laughed, ribbed each other, and talked about the old days, but most of all we created a story that reflected black dreams and aspirations. There was no hip-hop gangsterism, no ghetto fabulousness, no bling-bling clichés. Meisel simply shot a beautiful story with one of the most important icons of this century. His testimony to Naomi, who he first photographed at the age of 15, is both a love story and an ode to creativity, excellence and longevity.

Sozzani herself makes some points about the armies of bland, blond Eastern Europeans. It’s funny, thinking about it now, that they don’t, as a group, inspire dreams. So much of fashion, as we know, is determined by groups. The tribes of fashion. The supermodels—Naomi, Linda, Christy, Cindy, Stephanie—were, after all, a group. They helped set the tone for the period, as did the waifs and the Goths, and their success was not an accident. They fed peoples’ imaginations.

Now we’re in the age of the wall-eyed blond. What is it that they represent to us? What experience? The point of being racially or ethnically representative on the runways or in pictures is, I suppose, to impart a unique experience or desire—something that goes beyond skin color or ethnic background but is not unrelated to it.

Well, I think that’s what you see in Meisel’s pictures of Campbell, Lopez, Kebede and the other models. They are a way of looking, yes—glamourous, cool, ultra-accessorized—but they are also a way of being.

Here’s some of the Sozzani interview:
Q: So how did the black issue come about?
A: I was in New York in early February for the shows. I always notice the black girls in the streets in New York, more than I would in Milan. In the beginning Steven and I were talking about three or four stories, and then it became the entire issue. Steven really tried to reach all the girls who were around—Pat Cleveland, Iman, Naomi, the young girls, like Liya and Alek Wek. We also went back to the pictures that were used in the past of the black models and performers, like Tina Turner.

Q: Diversity on the runways has been the subject of a lot of media attention.
A: We asked Robin Givhan [of The Washington Post] to write a piece. She did a good story. She said that what we were doing was great but—what will happen next month? Will everything go back to where it was before, with all-white models? I think she was right to ask that. I hope the issue will be something that can change things. Anyway, people will talk about it, for sure. Like or dislike, it will be a controversial issue. I think it’s good to keep that tension and focus on this subject.

Q: Everybody complains about the models today, the sameness, the blank faces.
A: Nowadays, at the shows, I turn to my editors and say, ‘What’s the name of the girl, what’s her name?’ I really cannot recognize one from the other. The models in the past, like Linda and Naomi, were immediately recognizable. They had a lot of personality. These new girls have nothing. You can paint everything on their faces in a way because they have no expression. And the girls we used to see on the runway were very elegant. Liya is elegant. To me, she walks like a princess. Now the girls all look the same—from the first to the last.

The problem is partly with the modeling agencies. They have a lot of white girls—it’s easier. To find black girls takes more time. It’s a problem of research and talent, to find the right girls. We’re a little bit back to a period in the 70s, when you didn’t remember the name of a single model. They were not girls making an interpretation of the clothes, the way Linda did. They were just models. In the beginning of the 90s, those models were really celebrities—Christy, Naomi, Cindy, Stephanie.

Q: It’s the follow-the-leader mentality. And it winds up being such a narrow view of the world.
A: When you see the black issue and all the pictures, you realize that these girls in a way have to work much harder than other models. They are more in touch with their own personalities—they’re not simply models in front of a camera. They really try to get the tension.

Q: Do you think the issue will have an impact?
A: Yes, I think it will. I noticed the June issue of French Vogue had a split cover with a black model and white model, though there’s nothing inside.

Q: It’s strange to be talking about racial diversity today in fashion. We should be further along. Is there a risk the fashion world will just see it as something trendy?
A: It could happen, and it would be a pity. Because, you know, it’s easier to do a normal issue. Paolo Roversi does a story, Craig McDean does another, and Steven Meisel another… I would feel very disappointed if this is only a nice moment. We should go forward.

Q: I suppose an all-black issue is something an American magazine might naturally or logically have done, more so than an Italian magazine.
A: In a way, it’s one of those stupid ideas that when everyone sees it, they think, Oh, I should have done that. [Sozzani laughs] It was so easy.

Q: What the black issue a political gesture?
A: I didn’t feel it was a political gesture. Maybe it was political in that when I see all these girls who look alike in a fashion show, they really annoy me. We need to see beautiful clothes on beautiful women

[deflyricist2006]

I am wondering when does Vogue Italia come out?

[Miss Dalloway]

I am sorry but those covers are beyond boring and unimpressive, they could have done way better.Sure they all look beautiful but nothing exciting there, can not wait to see the editorials specially Naomi's, and its fun getting VI this early haha.

[maffam]

Originally Posted by deflyricist2006

I am wondering when does Vogue Italia come out?

i think one of the articles said next thursday in europe and in the us sometime after.

[Bahiyya]

Originally Posted by alix*

Am I the only who doesn't find the covers that great?

Sure Sesilee's one is brilliant, but the other three are less than mediocre. How dissapointing.

No, there are a few of us. But yes, for me, Sesilee steals the show. Wowza . Where did this girl come from? Must find her model thread . And the shots from the editorials...man I wish there were four different covers so I could have multiple copies.

[Saracita]

I never understood the point of doing a foldout unless it's one continous shot, and I don't really count getting one of these "foldout portraits" as being on the cover, sorry

That said, they all look good, and I'm actually happy that it's not a multi-girl cover. I'm just a little underwhelmed. But that was bound to happen after all the rumors, hype, and speculation