The ads for this season are not very inspiring...lots of horrible models, and horrible poses/photography...Eugenia Volodina and Nataliya seemed to have botched their ads...as well as Melissa Haro for Guess...another disaster. I also do not like Daria's ads...and even the venerable Fernanda Tavares looks bad in her ads as well...
That said, here are my faves:
!. Bianca Balti for Donna Karan Collection: here she looks positively ethereal. It's def the best of the bunch...including her other ads...The Missoni one specially makes her look to alien like and doesnt accentuate her more sensual features...Her gaze is mesmerizing in the DK ad.....the missoni is too colorful, takes away form her face...the Dk's ad muted colors really bring out her dark features and the shades accentuating her facial structure.
2. Erin Wasson in Giorgio Armani and Michael Kors. Can the girl take a bad picture? (well, the maybelline ads do look awful, but then again they did airbrush the hell out of her face). Erin's definitely up there with Bianca in the pouty, sexy, dangerously fierce face category. Definitely a winner. (Jessica Vandersteen is also looking stunning, in the same leage as erin and bianca, and i'd like to see her doing more work...her editorial in Marie Claire with John Stamos was spectacular.)
3. Mystery blonde in Ports 1961. I cannot fot he life of me figure out who this girl is. In profile she looks incredibly fragile and ethereal. When i saw he rface in the ads running on US Vogue I almost fell off my chair ...Her beauty is that stunning. I am convinced she is the same mystery blonde in the much fabled "Neo-Mod" editorial in Elle. I am also convinced she is an already known mod with bleached blonde hair.
4. Anja Rubik in Emanuel Ungaro and Neiman Marcus. Blonde locks definitely have turnd this average waifish mod into a knockout...her facial features are definetely well served by the lighter hair. This mod actually looks good without the quirky features or horrible posing commonplace in other better known models., Is finally getting all the work she deserves after languishing for years with Next models...
5. Finally...Kate Moss in everything!!! Kate has finally matured into a gorgeous, stunning specimen...she definitely has outgrown her late 90's waifish look, and her face has aged beautifully. Her facial features are not so well served in her Rimmel work, although I think she very much deserves her beauty contract. Her lingerie work in the Joop! spots has her looking better than a lot other mods in lingerie ads. One only needs to look at her Burberry spot, walking down the street in a slim, well fitting trench, to understand why she is an icon. As for the "new Kates"...Mona Johannesson and Rosie Huntington may be hailed as such, and Kate definitely wishes she looked as good as they do now when she was a teen, but they definitely lack the one of a kind allure that made the whole fashion world drop their amazonian beauties like tatiana patitz, et. al, and embrace a whole new fashion ideal.
In an honorable mention, ha ha, I am liking Iselin Steiro in her Just Cavalli ads...at first I hated her, but I am commong around to recognizing her allure. She, more than Rosie and Mona, def has "Next Kate" appeal. Ditto for Maria Dvirnik, another unusual beauty.
And to close, Id like to mention the worst ad campaign of the season: Eugenia Volodina for Eres. She is definiely not a "body" model. Whoever thought she's look good in lingerie must have had a gun pointed at him. Although Eres has featured quirky mods in the past, it has never, to may knowledge, feature a model so out of shape as Eugenia looks in their ads...I remember going to their little shop in soho next to the chanel boutique and seeing a huge blow up picture of Hannelore in their lingerie...I am loathe to think such an over size image of Eugenia will be grazing their store walls...lets hope they do some airbrushing first...