You are flawed - just like everyone else. You’re never going to be pretty all the time. That’s life. But you’re also a total stunner. By some happy accident of genetics, no matter what you’re wearing or doing, you’re about twelve times prettier (oh, subjective Beauty!) than anyone within a hundred feet of you. You could be three inches shorter or twenty-five pounds heavier and it would still be the case. These are The Facts; accept them and forget them.

The pictures they take aren’t really about you. You are a vehicle for an idea - but it is not your idea, so you don’t get to decide how it plays out. Whoever is directing you has put all kinds of thought into what they want. Take direction, even if you think it will make you Not Pretty (did I already mention this is impossible?). Good fashion is rarely about being attractive in the conventional sense. Editorials are meant to create an aesthetic, convey a mood, and show off some clothes. Again - no matter how impersonal it seems - it’s not about you. Not yet, anyway.

Listen to your photographer and your stylist. They have a lot riding on what comes out of a photo shoot. They probably already have careers and reputations and are even more invested in what goes to print than you are. Besides, the photographer is going to take ten times as many pictures as anyone can ever use, so you have lots of room for error. The reason for all this excess is to capture something unique, enigmatic.

I know you’ve seen a thousand pictures of models with scowls and pouty lips. It may seem counterintuitive, but (and I can’t stress this enough) DON’T MAKE THIS YOUR DEFAULT FACE. It’s not very interesting and, unless you’re really good, it’s going to look amateur and campy. The best thing is to try not to have a Default Face at all. Forget what you see in the mirror, forget your Best Angle. The magic pictures are going to happen in between your “modeling”.

And finally, remember that this is not everything you are. You might be really lucky and make a career out of this, but you probably won’t. Your success or failure here does not define you. You are a living, breathing, three dimensional human who is of infinitely more value than a two dimensional image. Try not to ignore the former: sooner or later it will be your backup plan.
And just please, try to relax.
I promise it’s going to be fine.

c.b.

Photography by Mario Sorrenti

When I saw the images from Chadwick Tyler’s Tiberius gallery exhibition, I was speechless. They were far outside of anything I’d come to expect from a fashion editorial (which is what I first thought it was); I loved them simply because they felt new. The second time I went through them, I was slightly disgusted. My only frame of reference for the stark images of madness and hysteria were holocaust victims, abused women, and the hopeless inmates of Victorian asylums. The gritty black and white shots of gaunt, half-naked and vulnerable women became brutal and exploitative. The third time I went through them they led me to three revelations.

There has always been a lot of discussion around the WORN table about the monster known as Mainstream Fashion. Its visual cues seep into every aspect of media culture, from music videos to detergent ads, an homogenous human landscape of the pale and thin. We absorb more images in a day than our brains could ever consciously process, and we internalize them without analysis. But what are we really looking at? What are the messages underneath the bright clothes and perfect skin?

My First Big Idea
Trying to put Tyler’s exhibit into the context of fashion is both simple and disconcerting. I looked at the images and asked myself, “What do these pictures have in common with fashion photography?” The answer is everything – except the soft sell. The girls are young and beautiful, but instead of placid expressions and flattering glow they stand half-dressed and covered in grime, harsh overhead lighting accenting every bone and angle. They aren’t thinner than other models (indeed, they are models and representative of the industry) but they look painfully gaunt. Vulnerability that, in another context, would pass as limpid or passive is suddenly tinged with madness and desperation. Common poses that might be hidden by couture and setting suddenly seem brutal, insect-like. I caught my breath: Was this fashion’s Dorian Gray portrait? Is this what every shoot would be if we took away the Pretty?

I immediate went searching for more information about Tiberius. I wanted to know what Tyler had to say, but could find nothing. I went looking for critical reviews but, outside of a fairly mindless press release and some very ass-kissy raves from the usual fashion suspects, I had no luck there either. All I had left was Tiberius himself.

My Second Big Idea
I am not an historian. Outside of a few juicy bits here and there, I admit I’m not that interested. As a result, I apologize in advance for my lack of vocabulary and understanding on points of ancient Roman politics. What I managed to read was hard slogging, and what I took away from it could be totally wrong. Nevertheless, this is what I think I found out: Tiberius was the second Emperor of Rome (14 – 37 AD) and he didn’t want to be in charge. After almost a decade in authority, his growing disenchantment with Rome and politics led him to absent himself almost completely, leaving his friend and ally in charge. This man would eventually betray Tiberius by trying to seize power and the emperor, already isolated and angry, fell headlong into a spiral of madness, executing anyone he suspected had plotted behind his back. The Roman historian Tacitus describes the bloody purges:

There lay, singly or in heaps, the unnumbered dead, of every age and sex, the illustrious with the obscure…Spies were set round them, who noted the sorrow of each mourner and followed the rotting corpse…The force of terror had utterly extinguished the sense of human fellowship, and… pity was thrust aside.

Roman historian Suetonius describes Tiberius as paranoid and perverse, fearful and rapacious.

I caught my breath again. Could it be that Tyler was not only mirroring the madness of the emperor, but shadowing the emotion of a man who finds himself in a position he cannot abide? Could Tiberius be a commentary on the photographer’s own disenchantment?

My Third Big Idea
Of course this is all one girl’s train of thought and it could all be nonsense. It may be that Chadwick Tyler didn’t think about any of these things – or anything at all. Perhaps Tiberius is an ode to misogyny or, as one WORN editor wryly suggested, Holocaust Chic. But the thing about this exhibit is that it made me think.

All day long we suck the world into our eyes, we question so little. I do it all the time, flicking through magazines or clicking from site to site: Like. Don’t like. Next. How many things do I simply internalize, never asking why or how it will affect my view of the world or even myself? The fashion industry does a whole lot of dictating, quantifying what is beautiful or desirable. On the other end, fashion critics demonize media images as tyrannical, damaging to our collective self esteem. But I have responsibility in all this, too. Ultimately, my choice to question or not controls both desire and damage.

Tiberius reminded me that I ought to be seeing instead of just looking. That’s what art (and whatever the Canada Arts Council thinks, fashion is most definitely art) should do.

c.b.

Addendum
After all my mental gymnastics, I found Chadwick Tyler’s artist statement with a rather vague and disappointing reference to “the juxtaposition of the meticulous and the disheveled” and “farm kids”, along with this anticlimactic explanation of the title:

Tiberius. Could be a place, a clan, a harem, a community, a gloomy Roman emperor. I can’t say. I like the word.

Hee hee. So maybe I overshot my mark.
You can find the full statement here.

In my heart of hearts, I’m a minimalist. I’m a sucker for a classic line and a clean palette and I never met a grey sweater I didn’t like. I have lots of odd things – feathered hats, pleather leggings, gold shoes – but they are headliners, cast in outfits made of neutral extras. Personally, I think people underestimate the dedication minimalism requires. Crazy crap is everywhere; it is nearly impossible to find the perfect oxford shirt or tailored wool pant.

Maggie Rizer for Max Mara: I find her enormous feet weirdly charming.

The first time I noticed Max Mara, it was somewhere in the dark heart of the raver ’90s. The Maggie Rizer campaign was one of the most brilliant things I’d ever seen. Simple, whimsical, classic and still totally modern, I tore the pictures out of my Vogue and pinned them to my wall for inspiration. A refugee in a world of fun fur and Swear boots, one look at Max and I respectfully fell into low-key love.

It was a departure for me. As a general rule, I don’t follow specific labels or designers. Firstly, I can’t afford that stuff and, even if I could, fashion is fickle and it’s not often any one line can hold me for more than a few months. As luxury brands continue to grow, hungry for profit and market share, the race-for-saleable trend seems to keep a lot of fashion houses from maintaining aesthetic consistency.

But despite a few brief flirtations with fad, Max Mara never seems to disappoint. Their fall 2009 Ready to Wear line is no exception –- and in fact is in many ways reminiscent of the look I fell in love with. As I ran through the images from their Fashion Week show, I felt my monochromatic heart swell modestly with conservative bliss…

Grey days: slim, simple, and chic, this is pretty typical of the ‘09 line. I love the slip showing underneath the skirt; this was a motif that ran through show. It’s the little bit of modern that keeps the classic Max Mara from looking stodgy.

Coats! Max Mara is so known for its classic coats, they have even become part of a traveling textile exhibition. I fell in love with this one for its kimono sleeves and loose line. And look –- two kinds of grey!

Shakin’ it up with some beige: I really can’t explain why I’m so weak in the knees for this. Whatever you might think, you can’t say the line doesn’t have a really strong theme…

Max gone wild. (Notice the three — gasp! — sequins peeping out from the hem.)

Another image from the campaign that stole my heart. Designed in the 90s, the suit is still stylish, the tights and shoes completely current – but it could have been made for Jackie Kennedy. Max Mara might be the perfect wear for time travel.

In need of a Max introduction? Established in 1951, founder Achille Maramotti named the company after a local character named Count Max, who was (according to the Independent) “perennially drunk but always dashing.”

– Images courtesy of The Fashion Spot forums.

Classically beautiful women should be left to men without imagination. Or so said Marcel Proust. The French have an expression I adore: jolie laide. Literally, it translates to beautiful ugly; the Collins English Dictionary defines it as “a woman whose ugliness is her chief fascination.” I think that is, perhaps, too simple an explanation. When I think of jolie laide, I think of women like Anjelica Houston and Sigourney Weaver, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Charlotte Gainsbourg, models Erin O’Connor and Kristen McMenamy, and (one of our editor’s favourites) Diana Vreeland. And I absolutely think of Tilda Swinton.

Tilda Swinton, photographed by Raymond Meier

The first movie I saw her in was Orlando, an adaptation of a Virginia Woolf novel. Though the story was interesting - a man who decides never to age and, as if that wasn’t enough, wakes up one morning transformed into a woman - it was Swinton I wanted to see. Already people were talking about her extraordinary androgyny. Jolie laide. While many of the roles that came after were not nearly so unlikely, Swinton kept me interested with intense acting and unsettlingly green eyes. She could go from delicate and fragile to masculine and frightening in a space of moments. I liked her best in her stranger roles, though. As the despicable arcangel Gabriel, she almost made Constantine (a really terrible film) worth the two hour slog, and her palest of pale White Witch in the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe was the perfect mix of diabolical beauty and avant-garde fashion.

Tilda Swinton in Lanvin at the 2009 Oscars

I’m pretty sure Tilda Swinton’s Oscar 2009 outfit made every “Worst Dressed” list in the western world. It was, in fact, a replay of 2008, when her long, black, one-sleeved Lanvin creation excited just as much censure. And yet both outfits were lovely - both ultramodern and understated elegant. I am convinced that on another woman they would have gone unremarked. But Swinton’s severe features transform her undeniably stylish clothes. There is something in her pale, almost alien features that defies all notion of conventional beauty. A true jolie laide, Swinton is both beautiful and ugly and impossible to classify - a complexity that does not lend itself to dividing the notions of “best” and “worst”.

Unattractiveness is an important thing. It binds us to the world and everything in it, just like beauty. If there is only one, it doesn’t make any sense. Proust was right. Ultimately, the state of jolie laide is much more interesting than just jolie. Despite Hollywood’s valiant (if misguided) attempt to assert a single, empirical beauty, women like Swinton will always appeal to those who are willing to use their imaginations.

Tilda Swinton, photographed by Craig McDean for Another Magazine

Tilda Swinton, photographed by Peter Lindbergh

c.b.