tentalicious
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[selfservicemagazine.com]
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Suzanne Koller talks about a new (old) direction for the magazine and the season:
"This issue is very different. It’s more in the tomboy, early-'90s direction—still glamorous, though. I think it’s somewhat of a reaction to what we’ve done in the past. It actually started with [contributing stylist] Marie Chaix, who wanted to work with someone different than she usually works with. I know that she was close with the artist Roe Ethridge, and so it really started from there, because Roe is an artist and fashion photographer. It can sometimes be more interesting to work with artists who understand fashion photography than just purely fashion photographers, and that brought me to Collier Schorr, who I have worked with and known for some time. I actually thought her men’s portraits were very sexy and good-looking, so I thought, ‘Well, maybe I can do that with women with her.' And so we shot a series of portraits, Collier and I, and wound up selecting three of those photos for the covers: Bo [Don], Anja [Rubik], and Iselin [Steiro].
In general, what we wanted to do this season was work specifically with art photographers, but art photographers who understand fashion photography. They’re quite long stories, like 40 to 46 pages. They look so much better when they are long. Sometimes art photographers don’t understand fashion and it can become kind of strange-looking, but Collier totally understands fashion. The fashion for our shoot is also more so in her direction—not really fancy or anything like that; it’s more kind of tomboy, t-shirts, shirts. The mood is totally androgynous but it is also a lot of minimalism and a return to the early '90s. I’m going more in that direction: very black and white, plain colors. It’s kind of 'back to basics' in a way, instead of going over the top. I really was fascinated by these tomboy pictures of very sexy women looking very normal, but without a lot of makeup. I just find that quite interesting and new, in a way; it feels fresh. Even in my own life, I am kind of tomboyish for the moment. [Laughs] I would say I dress every day very casual, but then for dressing up, it’s—I don’t know how to say it—it’s more like dressing down, in a way. I really like menswear: men’s shirts, pants, shoes. I'm very much into that. You know, like Church's shoes for women. They’re nice.
Casting-wise, I really like and wanted to work with Arizona [Muse], Anja, and Iselin—the top girls. And I really wanted to shoot them in a very normal way, because they look very beautiful when they just come in the door—beautiful skin, simple makeup. I really like to shoot the supermodels in a very simple, natural way. I find it quite sexy-looking, actually. Anja was really impressive because she totally understood the idea. She is always depicted so over-the-top sexy, but she looks very beautiful in more simple pictures, which I find quite surprising. I really like a gallery of portraits of the bigger girls and then always three or four younger, newer faces and put them all together on the same level. This is where Bo [Don] comes in, and Ondria [Hardin] and the others. With someone like Bo, it's an important moment in her career—I’m quite sure that telling her agent that she has the cover, that’s how they will sell her for the next collections. Of course, we will see her all over the place. That’s actually how it works in the business—it all happens for them and they become bigger. For me, when I choose them, I always need a nice personality—of course you want them to be good and beautiful but they have to have a nice personality.
Anja, for example, in the beginning of the shoot, I thought that she didn’t really get what we wanted from her, but she did understand it very quickly. It was amazing to see how she changed from very glamorous posing, which we didn’t really want, and then she looked at the images of Collier, and she totally got it. Naturally, for work, models will act as other people ask them to: like models. But when you see them in real life, they are also kind of tomboyish sometimes. They’re not sitting in very glamorous positions, like bimbo style. They’re not really like that—they’re normal girls. They're still gorgeous-looking and have amazing beauty, but for me, it’s more about the face and the character of a woman. And knowing Collier’s work, it was important for me to go in her direction and not have an idea that she could not really do. It would have looked wrong. Too much makeup, too much styling kills the whole thing."
intothegloss.comThis week, we're rolling out the three covers of the spring issue of Self Service, the biannual cult fashion tome (that we happen to be obsessed with), and speaking to the brains behind the pictures: the mag's creative director Suzanne Koller, photographer Collier Schorr, and makeup artist Karim Rahman. Here, Rahman talks about his favorite cover (pictured, featuring Iselin Steiro), the conservative use of mascara, and why we seem to be gravitating towards "very real" beauty:
“I’m French. I was born in the South, in Marseille, but I’ve been living in Paris for almost twenty years now, and working with Self Service for nearly that long. In terms of my aesthetic, it’s always a little bit different but the more natural look is definitely part of my philosophy; I’ve been working with Isabel Marant for 10 years, and she is very much about looking natural. But I love heavy makeup, too; I love black eyes, a heavy lip… I love the art of it, but I have to say I don’t try to hide women behind makeup.
I didn’t know Collier [Schorr]’s work before this shoot, but I loved working with her. It was totally different from what I do every day—it was not too fashion-y. And it was fun adjusting the makeup for Collier because she likes ‘boys’—she is very boyish—and yet we tried to still respect the character of the girl. The cover with Iselin [Steiro] is my favorite cover! [Laughs] One of my most important inspirations is David Bowie, and she reminds me of him: she has like no eyebrows and her bone structure is similar, everything. She has heavy, beautiful eyes. For the makeup, I just brushed her brows, and I drew them them in a bit with a pencil, because Suzanne [Koller, Self Service’s Creative Director] doesn’t like when you don’t have any eyebrows. It was all about beautiful texture, beautiful moisturizer with a little bit of shine on the lips and a lot of blush to emphasize bone structure. To keep the look matte, I blended the moisturizer and foundation, so you can still create shape and definition without being able to see the different textures.
How much to blend? It’s a recipe. First of all, I put a lot of moisturizer on the face. I have my little secret, which is Rodin Oil—just two drops—and then a little bit of cream moisturizer. I do a nice massage, to make everything evened-out. And the same thing with the foundation: I put a touch of foundation in my hand and I apply it almost as if I was applying a cream, so, from the middle of the face to the outer part, and a touch of concealer if it’s necessary. I don’t like to use much powder because I want to keep the natural shine and not have to add any fake shimmery things afterwards; I don’t like that.
With [the no-mascara trend], I think brands have been doing too much with fake lashes and things like that, so now people are like, ‘This is enough, this is a lie.’ But on the other hand, for me, a woman doesn’t move her eyes the same way without mascara; it’s very feminine. So, what I do is I still apply a little bit of mascara—but a tiny bit. I take the brush, take off the excess with my hand, and put a little bit of mascara at the roots of the lashes and expand it to the tips, but just once. One swipe in the middle and one swipe on the outer part, and that’s it.
This season, I think Self Service girl is sexy, sensitive, powerful, and very real. She is someone who is easy to see yourself in, and recognize in yourself. She is real, not like a girl on the cover who seems distant; it’s much more approachable. I think that women want to recognize themselves. They’ve had enough of lying and advertising, and now they want to feel a bit of reality.”