Classiq - An online journal that celebrates cinema, culture, style and storytelling.

2 April 2018

Jane

Jane Goodall, now one of the world’s most admired primatologists and conservationists, was 26 years old, had no scientific university degree, or training in the field when, on July 14, 1960, she embarked on a lifelong dream: living in the wild and conducting a pioneering study of chimpanzees in Gombe, Tanzania. Her boss, Kenyan paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey, sent her there – he was looking for “a mind unbiased by scientific theory” – “with the hope that a better understanding of chimpanzee behavior might provide us with a window on our past,” Jane remembers. She took along a notebook, binoculars, and her 54-year-old mother, Vanne Morris-Goodall.

Her discoveries were revolutionary, her passion for her work was monumental, and her study of the chimps is the longest continuous study of a wild animal in history. But, for me, the beauty of the documentary Jane, directed by Brett Morgen, is more than scientific facts, it’s about Jane’s love of the wild life, of nature, of discovery. This is the first thing I want to take away from this wondrous and inspirational portrait of Jane Goodall.

“As a child, which was before tv and computer games, I loved spending time outside,” says Jane when she recounts the beginning of her passion for animals and nature. I hope every parent and every child gets to see this film, because its importance far surpasses the scientific world. It digs deep into not only that quality which makes us, the human beings, the most advanced of the primates (it’s not knowledge, but empathy), but fosters a love for nature, for the wild, and for the wild at heart, as it summons you to live life with an open mind and with a thirst of knowledge that rather stems from your own passions than from university degrees, rationality or the truths known thus far.

photos: Jane Goodall Institute/National Geographic Creative | from archival footage by Hugo von Lawick (pictured in the second image with Jane Goodall)

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30 March 2018

Defining Moments in Rock ‘n’ Roll Style (and Who Shot Them)

There are countless rock & roll images that are burnt in the public’s collective memory. They have played a major role in creating the image of our favourite or most influential musicians, and that image has been taken for granted without much acknowledging the photographer who took it. Today I am taking the time to acknowledge some of the photographers who, through their passion for music and talented eye, have helped create the visual identity of rock music and of three of the most extraordinary musicians this world has known.

Kurt Cobain photographed by Charles Peterson

In our teens, my brother used to listen to Nirvana and I listened to crap. Yes, I spent the best years of my life (in terms of forming my musical culture) listening to bad music, the kind that said nothing to me, that meant nothing to me, that did not help me figure me out and shape my personality, all those things music is supposed to do. Sure, I heard Nirvana songs all the time and I am the one who bought my brother all their albums, but I didn’t listen, I didn’t want to listen, I didn’t know what to do with their music yet. It was only years later that I understood that that truly was the last rock ‘n’ roll revolution. And I do believe I missed out on much in my teenage years because I didn’t listen to good music – “Nothing sounded as sincere as Nirvana’s music. It took a long time for me to accept that any other music could be good in other ways. Including my own”, Weezer’s River Cuomo best summed it up. I have made considerable progress over the years, but the music cultural difference between me and my brother and husband, for example, who both breath music, is still huge.

Kurt Cobain photographed by Frank Micelotta for MTV Unplugged, November 1993

But the beautiful thing about growing up is that you change, mature (hopefully), start to listen, truly listen, to others and to yourself, and to music. That said, I believe that so many people idolize Kurt Cobain, who was a hero to a generation of musicians, admirers and misfits, and that so many great thoughts have been written about him that I really don’t think the world needs mine too. “Rock music had become kind of hedonistic – 35-year-old men taking a helicopter to the stage and dating supermodels, and going out of their way to separate themselves from their audience. Nirvana, more than any other band, rocked way harder, had significant originality, while looking like guys you went to high school with. I think that was their secret. There was an inclusion that was long overdue, and it was what rock was supposed to be about. The legend isn’t simply going to be the way that he [Kurt Cobain] took his life; I believe it will always be the songs.” Chris Cornell, Soundgarden

I don’t want to talk about their music, because, I am saying it again, many already have better than I ever could: “I think that grunge and Nirvana was this last big musical movement before everything was virtually connected in real time all the time. Now things just move so quickly that there’s really no ability for something to bubble up organically and be meaningful, not for an entire generation or world,” Charles Peterson, who photographed Kurt Cobain and Nirvana throughout their brief existence, told Billboard.

But I would like to make a note on Kurt Cobain’s style, which was an intrinsic part of the man who was the center of grunge counter-culture. Maybe these images featured here are not the ones mostly associated with the musician and his style, but they have a special meaning to me. The understatement of these looks, as opposed to the musician’s more radical dressing choices, is like a visual translation of the way Nirvana’s music has seamlessly found its way into my life, not in an abrupt way in my teens, but in a subtler, more consistent way throughout the years. And just like timeless style, it’s there to stick.

Bob Dylan photographed by Jerry Sctatzberg for the cover of Blonde on Blonde

Jerry Schatzberg was commissioned to shoot Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde cover. It shows Dylan dressed for winter in a suede jacket and checkered scarf. Many took the blurry image for a drug allusion, but it wasn’t. “He was always very cautious – even with me at first. He didn’t trust the press – but we got over that and he trusted me. You can tell from the photographs that I took that he would try anything. […] We started out in the studio taking the colour photos of him looking sombre and holding his shirt. I thought I’d like to go outside, so we went to the Meatpacking District in Chelsea, which wasn’t a fashionable art centre then. The image used is slightly out of focus, and this was interpreted as a drug trip – but it wasn’t. It was February; he was wearing just that jacket, and I was wearing something similar. It was cold and I shook the camera. He chose this image himself for the album cover”, the photographer described his experience of shooting one of the most important cultural figures of the 20th century and the cover of one of the best albums of all time.

“The closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind,” Dylan famously said about Blonde on Blonde, “that thin, that wild mercury sound.” At the time, Dylan’s music style was changing, and so was his dressing style. Dylan’s style has never been so revolutionary as to dominate the cultural conversation around him. Nor should clothes ever do that. But they should be part of the conversation. In its low-key, unassuming, yet completely aware way, his style has always helped define the visual tone of his music. There have been quite a few creative changes in Bob Dylan’s career, and his style has changed along the way. But I’ve always loved that photo, that look, that album, that after thought it evoked. “It’s the perfect image of Dylan at the time, creating in a heedless rush too fast to stay in focus, even for a second,” wrote the Rolling Stone magazine. That’s Bob Dylan. Always staying true to himself, never belonging to anybody but himself, being the voice of himself and only himself. “All I’d ever done was sing songs that were dead straight and expressed powerful new realities. I had very little in common and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of.”

Bruce Springsteen and Clarence Clemons photographed by Eric Meola for the cover of Born to Run, 1975

I was deeply moved by the story behind the cover photo for the album Born to Run, 1975, designed by in-house Columbia art director John Berg, taken by Eric Meola and featuring Bruce Springsteen and Clarence Clemons. “We used it to invent ourselves, our friendship, our partnership on an epic scale. […] When the cover is closed, the album front is a very charming photo of a young, white, punk rock ‘n’ roller. But when it opens, a band is born and a tall tale begins. […] When you saw that cover, it was filled with the resonance, the mythology, of rock’s past, and a freshness calling toward its future,” explains Bruce in his autobiography. This kind of story gets to you, just like his music does, just like the entire book Born to Run does.

That powerful and mind-opening album cover also sealed Springsteen’s rock star image: leather jacket, shredded white tank top and jeans – three great American classics, which have always been part of his dressing repertoire. “Listening to the album for the first time was one of those mind blowing moments where you realize, even as you’re experiencing it, that things will never be quite the same,” wrote Dave Gourdoux. An album that was simultaneously steeped in rock history and modern. Let’s go back to those clothes for a moment: they are a pillar of classic rock ‘n’ roll, but the mandatory mention is that, on Bruce, they looked new again. He made them his own.

Related content: Morrissey in His Own Words / Can You Hear the Music? / Chronicles Volume One

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23 March 2018

Clothes and Character in the Films of Jean-Pierre Melville

Throughout his career, Jean-Pierre Melville retained a passion for all things American and especially for the classic Hollywood gangster and noir movies. He eagerly borrowed the iconography of the genre – the snap-brim hats, the belted trench coats, the crooned music, the cars and nightclubs, but made its conventions entirely his own, tailored on his highly stylised world. Melville’s films are marked by their silences. Melville’s men are without women. In American noirs, it is often the femme fatale whom he falls for that brings the morally ambiguous hero alienated from society his doomed fate. There is no room for sentimentality in Melville’s films. They are focused on masculinity.

“Le samouraï”, 1967

There is no one responsible for Melville’s anti-hero’s fate but himself. It is his destiny. He is destined for sacrifice, or self-destruction. In Le samouraï, we are signaled Jef Costello’s fate from the very beginning of the movie. The silence. Him alone in the room. The bird singing in the cage. Symbols of complete solitude and imprisonment… in his own destiny. Melville makes great use of circumstantial symbolism, remarks film historian Antoine Coppola, an element encountered in classic Japanese cinema. The character, the dignity, the gracefulness, the excrutiating attention to detail, the rigorous, even religious minimalist style, from Delon’s acting to the mise-en-scène, the importance given to a death-driven figure – it’s like a rite, and all these elements draw inspiration from the Japanese culture and cinema. But whatever the influence, Melville’s films are his own, an individualistic genre, infused by understatement and a sense of cool, an idealised world of mobsters and thugs, living and dying by a certain code of honour. Melville’s characters are their own. And they dress the part.

“When an author becomes an adjective,
it means that he’s entered a higher category.
We say ‘Melvillian’ in the same way that we say ‘Fellinian’ or ‘Hitchcockian'”.
Philippe Labro

Roger Duchesne in “Bob le flambeur”, 1956

Roger Duchesne in Bob le flambeur, 1956

Bob le flambeur is about the crooks, losers and high rollers on the streets and boulevards. Jean-Pierre Melville took his camera out in the streets four years before Breathless (1960) and Bob le flambeur is often considered the first Nouvelle Vague film or the precursor of the Nouvelle Vague. Rui Nogueira, who wrote Melville on Melville, a book-length interview in 1971, goes even earlier than that, to Melville’s first film, Le silence de la mer (1947), which was filmed on location, under precarious conditions, with no budget, with anything that was available, when he talks about the director of the father of the French New Wave. Melville concurred: “The New Wave? I invented it in 1937”, referring to a detective film he made alone and with no money, using stock found on the black market. “What the new filmmakers are doing, I wanted to do in 1937. Unfortunately, I was only able to do it in 1947, with Le silence de la mer“, he told Bertrand Tavernier in the magazine L’Étrave.

Roger Duchesne is Bob Montagné, an unlucky gambler and failed bank robber. He glides through gambling rooms and Pigalle nightclubs “in those moments between day and night… between heaven and hell”, as the narration goes. Bob lives by a certain code de l’honneur, he is a gentleman crook, his word is his bond, he always gives a hand to those in the spot. Melville’s intention was to make a film about a robbery when he wrote the script in 1950, but then John Huston’s Asphalt Jungle came out and “I could no longer deal, either dramatically or tragically, with the preparation and execution of a robbery”, he told Nogueira, so Bob became more of a “comedy of manners”.

And that’s what makes Bob le flambeur interesting: the film is not about the heist, but about Bob staying true to his essence. He is a gambler. He lives by night, and his clothes show it. His trench coat and fedora look authentic, crumpled, lived in. “The trench coats and the hats in later Melville films”, remarks Thierry Crifo, writer and scriptwriter, in the documentary Diary of A Villain, “are crisp and clean, but Bob le Flambeur isn’t clean; I mean the close-ups, night, his 3-day stubble, his trench coat, I find that more believable.” Bob’s character belongs to Roger Duchesne, and that may be partly because Duchesne himself was a gambler in real life. He had accumulated debts because of which Melville actually had to ask the permission of the villains in Pigalle for Duchesne to come back there and film. “The face of a crook”, says Bob staring at himself in a window, adjusting his tie, dressed in his trench coat and fedora hat. It truly feels like he’s playing himself, wearing his own clothes, true to his nature.

Jean Paul Belmondo in “Le doulos”, 1963

Jean-Paul Belmondo in Le doulos, 1963

A tale of loyalty and betrayal among thieves, an elegant exploration of underworld duplicity, Le doulos was the birth of the detective story, Melville-style. It marked the start of the director’s most important period, “the most flourishing and aesthetically pleasing period of his career”, as Denitza Bantcheva, writer of Jean-Pierre Melville – de l’œuvre à l’homme, concludes. Le doulos was also the first detective film that was referred to as metaphysical, Bantcheva continues. There is a philosophical reflection on human destiny and on what influences one’s fate, like the interaction between people, the role played by chance, misunderstanding and circumstance, and this existential theme would indeed be present in all Melville’s films from then on.

The film has Serge Reggiani as Maurice Faugel, a robber who has just done time, and Jean-Paul Belmondo as Silien, a safe-cracker who labours under the reputation of a police informant (“doulos” means hat, the gangster’s favoured felt Fedora, but is also slang for “stoolpigeon”). His clothes are the first sign in regard to the ambiguity of his character. Unlike Reggiani’s Faugel, whose creased, well-worn trench reminds of Bob le flambeur’ faithful representation of real-life gangsters, Belmondo’s Silien paves the way towards that clean and crisp aesthetic from Melville’s later films that Thierry Crifo was mentioning. Melville thought Belmondo was perfect for the part, and in Melville’s films we see a Belmondo that does not exist anywhere else, remarks Denitza Bantcheva. His expressions are subtle and refined, his facial movement is minimal, which is the exact opposite of Belmondo’s naturally lively and exuberant acting style.

Appearance is important to Silien, he dresses carefully, wears fine clothes, his trench and hat and suit and coat are peerlessly cool. “You pay for those clothes by selling newspapers?” is what two policemen ask him during an interrogation, hinting at “improper” ways of getting them. Because, you see, there are certain unwritten rules which crooks don’t brake. Faugel uses the expression “proper crooks” in Le doulos, meaning that crooks, Melville’s crooks that is, don’t betray their own kind, they stick with each other, they don’t rat, they are rooted in the male code of honour. “I’m going to leave, I’m going to live somewhere, a place without cops and crooks, if that exists”, says Silien at one point. Maybe he knows he doesn’t belong with any of them. His character evokes feelings of both escape and imprisonment. With his inscrutable charm, Belmondo represents a loner, but also the damned on whom destiny is hovering over, regardless of whether he’s on the good guys’ or on the bad guys’ side.

Alain Delon in “Le samouraï”, 1967

Alain Delon in Le samouraï, 1967

In Le samouraï, Alain Delon recedes in the safety of his trench coat. It’s his armour. Together with the tilted downward hat, the trench is also part of what has come to define the protagonist of films noir. But he’s a different kind of noir anti-hero. He’s Melville’s noir anti-hero. Like a samourai, Jef Costello abides by a code of conduct and leads a solitary existence. His dressing is like a ritual, systematically putting on his hat and coat before going out to get a job done. Everything about him is cool and calculated. It’s like he is fitting himself for battle.

Le samourai is a film that extracts its substance from cinema and belongs to the cinemas, so it uses words only when absolutely necessary and vital, said Rui Nogueira in an interview. Melville considered Alain Delon one of the greatest French actors. When the director came to Delon’s house to read him the script for the film, after seven or eight minutes of reading, Alain suddenly looked at his watch and said “There hasn’t been a line of dialogue. That’s good enough for me; I’m making this film.” And when the actor heard the name of the script, he beckoned Melville to follow him, went into his bedroom where a samourai sword hung over the bed. The bedroom was decorated in Japanese style, with the rigor and austerity you might expect in a samourai’s room. This was one of those films which were meant to be.

In a career-defining performance, in the role of a Parisian contract killer who has realised he is being double crossed by his employees and seeks revenge, Alain Delon conjures Melville’s perfect anti-hero. Delon’s exceptional good looks and impeccable look meet Melville’s idea of the gangster as an image. Clothes make the man in Le Samouraï. Everything is simple, stark, clean-cut, primordial to his lifestyle – the trim grey suit, the black slim tie and white button-down shirt, another black suit, the inky wool coat, the hat, the trench. Delon is dressed with the finest precision, but he seems completely unaware of his appearance. He’s completely detached from everything, hardly betraying an emotion. It’s part of the job, of his profession. He lives and kills alone. There is a scene towards the beginning of the film, where Delon, stopped at a traffic light, is watched admiringly by a pretty young woman. His body language is minimal and signals that he has noticed her gaze, but he only gives her a blank look and turns away, without even satisfying her with a smile. Nothing distracts him from his fateful path.

Yves Montand in “Le cercle rouge”, 1970

Yves Montand in Le cercle rouge, 1970

For Le cercle rouge, Jean-Pierre Melville returned to the heist story he had wanted to do in Bob le flambeur. It’s about two professional crooks, fresh-out-of-jail Corey (Alain Delon) and Vogel (Gian Maria Volonté), who has just escaped arrest, and another man, an alcoholic ex-cop, Jansen (Yves Montand), who takes on the job as a rehabilitating exercise. It is in Le cercle rouge, more so than in his other films, that Melville’s austere stylistic magnificence leads to a more profound connection with his characters and his stories of unwritten, deep rules of right and wrong that the men of the underworld live by.

But I don’t want to steer away from Melville’s technical mastermind, and the theme of the robbery itself, because the almost half-hour-long, wordless, intense, magnificent heist is cinema making in its most pure form. It’s one of the most memorable scenes in the history of cinema. After the film ended this second time I watched it a couple of weeks ago (I have recently rewatched all Melville’s movies after many years), I immediately played that entire sequence again. And I would like to quote Philippe Labro, writer and filmmaker, who notes: “When Melville shoots Yves Montand climbing then descending and then climbing the stairs of the building in which the astonishing heist in Le cercle rouge is going to happen, he takes his time, all his time, and we are fascinated by the action precisely because it goes on for a long time, and because it announces another action. Time, according to Melville, allows the suspense to be established and the tragedy to be built.”

In a true Melvillian crime style, all the leading characters in Le cercle rouge are crooks, cops and crooked cops. The trench coat is their dress code. Everyone from Delon to Bourvil (finally cast against type and who impeccably plays the inspector) wears one, but it is Montand who captured my attention. It’s maybe because he dresses well to hide reality. He almost dresses too well. A new job and good clothes are his ticket out of the rout, his way of regaining self-respect. At one point in the script, Jansen is described as follows: “Jansen, stretched out on his bed, fully dressed, filthy, unshaven, with a three-day beard. Like Faulkner in one of his alcoholic bouts.” He has harrowing hallucinations under the influence of alcohol, he’s sweating, disheveled, his shirt is dirty, he wears a slouchy coat.

But then he gets a call from Alain Delon and when he answers the phone we are given a glimpse into his past life and a completely different man – there is a beautiful, striking shot of Montand at his lowest having as background a Louis Vuitton trunk, elegant clothes and accessories. He is given this new job, and the next time we see him, when he meets Delon in the nightclub, his transformation is superb. Melville shows him starting from his polished black shoes upwards, to the perfectly cut suit, tailored grey coat, striped shirt, slim knitted tie, and fedora. He is dressed impeccably and his look only gets better from that point on. In the heist scene he appears in la pièce de résistance, tuxedo, white shirt and bow-tie, and trench coat on top. He is the cool, composed, concise, and adept elite sniper again.

sources: “Melville on Melville”, by Rui Nogueira / interview with Thierry Crifo in the documentary Diary of A Villain / interview with Denitza Bantcheva in the documentary “Birth of the Detective Story – Melville Style” / interview with Florence Moncorgé-Gabin / interview with film historian Antoine Coppola in the documentary “In the Mood for Melville” / interviews with Rui Nogueira and Ginette Vincendeau, author of “Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris” (all documentaries available in the Jean-Pierre Melville collection released by StudioCanal and on the Blu-ray Le samouraï released by The Criterion Collection)

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14 March 2018

Celebrating A Designer, A Friendship, A Legacy: Hubert de Givenchy and Audrey Hepburn

A retrospective of the special friendship and unique collaboration between Hubert de Givenchy, who passed away over the weekend at age 91, and Audrey Hepburn in the way I know best: talking about movies.

Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, 1961

“His design, his thought centered and focused on her [Audrey’s] physical being. It’s like a great composer when he writes for a great artist. She was the physical expression of what Givenchy did,” said Stanley Donen, who directed Hepburn in Funny Face (1957) and Charade (1963).

There have been quite a few remarkable actor-director partnerships in the history of cinema, but Audrey Hepburn’s most symbiotic screen collaboration was with fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy, whose creative mind and understanding of Audrey’s figure, needs and personality played a key role in defining her singular style on-and-off screen. She was a beacon of style. And I don’t think there is any other actress whose roles have emulated her personal style to such extent as in the case of Audrey Hepburn. From the moment Hepburn and Givenchy met, the actress’ personal style was inextricably linked to the designer for the rest of her life, and, after Sabrina (1954), their first film together, Audrey requested Givenchy to design for all her films (they eventually worked together on eight films – the most important five of which I am talking about today). “His are the only clothes in which I am myself. He is far more than a couturier; he is a creator of personality.” This could explain why Givenchy had such a successful contribution to cinema, unlike many other fashion designers.

Audrey Hepburn, “Sabrina”, 1954

Sabrina, directed by Billy Wilder, marked the beginning of the beautiful friendship between Audrey Hepburn and Hubert de Givenchy. She wanted to wear a real Paris dress in Sabrina. Audrey Hepburn had a style that was very much her own, knowing exactly what complimented her slender figure, and insisted that she selected her own clothes for the film. She was sent to see Cristóbal Balenciaga in Paris, but he was too busy preparing his latest collection, so he sent Audrey to his good friend, Hubert de Givenchy, who had worked for Balenciaga. It turned out that Givenchy couldn’t design something especially for her either, as he was in the middle of a collection himself, so Audrey asked him to show her his previous collection.

It was exactly what she needed and she ended up buying a capsule wardrobe, formed of three outfits, that would mark her transformation from a shy waif into a sophisticated Parisienne in the film: a collarless Oxford-gray wool tailleur and two gowns, the white organdy bustier dress with navy floral embroidery (a design which directed the attention to Hepburn’s narrow waist and slim upper torso) and the bateau neckline black cocktail dress. All the other costumes were designed by Edith Head, who won the Oscar for costume design, without crediting Givenchy’s significant contribution, but that’s a story for another time.

Audrey Hepburn, “Funny Face”, 1957

Funny Face (1957) is not among my favourite films with Audrey Hepburn, although I do acknowledge its importance in fashion – not just because of Givenchy’s beautiful gowns that are at the center of the film, but also because of Audrey’s beatnik style as book clerk Jo Stockton, and of the way the film, despite its seemingly ridiculous plot, is smarter than it first appears to be, revealing a Pygmalion story in the form of a parody about the fashion world. Audrey Hepburn’s clothes that she wears in Paris for the photo shoots were, once again, designed by Hubert de Givenchy, and watching the film is like taking a trip through the fashion history and French elegance of that time.

Not only that, but Fred Astaire and Kay Thompson, playing fashion photographer Dick Avery and fashion editor Maggie Prescott, respectively, are clearly a hint to Richard Avedon and Diana Vreeland, two of the most important figures in fashion history. The photos for the title sequence were produced by Avedon himself and many of the pictures Dick Avery takes in Paris remind of the famous photographer’s work, so watching the film did very much seem like flipping through a ’50s fashion magazine, one directed by Diana Vreeland herself.

Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, 1961

Today it is hard to imagine anyone else as troubled call girl Holly Golightly, but Truman Capote, on whose novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) was based, was disappointed when Audrey Hepburn was cast in the role. When Capote sold the rights to Paramount, he had envisioned Marilyn Monroe as Holly and believed that Hepburn was completely wrong for the part. Paula Strasberg, Monroe’s acting coach, felt that playing a call girl was not good for Marilyn’s image, and the actress dropped out of production. For Audrey, on the other hand, was a welcome change after her princess and chauffeur’s daughter parts she had played in the past, even though Holly Golightly’s character was softened for the screenplay. But Breakfast at Tiffany’s was still a very modern film for 1961, and Hepburn was funny, yet moving in her role.

“I should be a stylish Holly Golightly. Even if that’s all I can contribute”, modestly said Audrey. She and Hubert de Givenchy teamed up again for Blake Edward’s romantic comedy. Her wardrobe is simple, elegant, iconic, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s was the movie that, in 1961, consecrated the black sheath dress, heralding a new era for women’s dresses, a more relaxed, freeing, modern style. The couturier designed two sleeveless black dresses for the film. From the very opening scene, when Holly stepped out of a yellow cab on a deserted Fifth Avenue, outside Tiffany’s, at that time of morning when the dawn had broken, wearing the black column gown with an open back and the Tiffany necklace of draped pearls, Audrey Hepburn made movie fashion history.

The other black dress is a knee-length cocktail dress with a slightly flared frilly skirt. But there are other Givenchy designs that are at least just as note-worthy: the fabulous lampshade hat, the pink cocktail dress and the double-breasted orange wool coat that was much copied after the release of the film. The funnel neck coat was classic Givenchy and Audrey would wear similar versions in Charade (1963), How to Steal A Million (1966), and in her personal wardrobe.

Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant, “Charade”, 1963

Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn together on screen. It’s hard to escape them. Stanley Donen’s Charade (1963) is one of the last great Old Hollywood entertainments and none other than Grant and Hepburn could better portray that idealised sort of perfection. It doesn’t hurt either that this skillful blend of adventure, suspense and style is set against the timeless Paris.

Givenchy dressed Hepburn in contemporary styles very evocative of the era, including a selection of high-buttoned jackets, coats and raincoats (Audrey favoured dress cuts that masked her collarbone), pencil skirts and shift dresses in colours of mustard, cream, red and black often cinched with a large belt to accentuate her petit frame. The image of Hepburn in a red suit and white pillbox hat walking the banks of the Seine with Cary Grant has become of one the film’s most enduring images.

Audrey Hepburn, “How to Steal A Million”, 1966

Few actresses had as much influence on the fashion of the 1950s and 1960s as Audrey Hepburn. Richard Avedon was one of the people who advised her to emphasize and not hide her qualities and distinctive traits like her body, a new, modern model of femininity opposed to the shapely sexiness in vogue at Hollywood at the time, her eye-makeup created by the Italian Alberto De Rossi, thick eyebrows and her natural brown hair, cut short.

In How to Steal A Million (1966), as Nicole Bonnet, the daughter of a master art forger, Audrey plays alongside Peter O’Toole, another great match for Audrey’s style, just as Cary Grant had been in Charade. In William Wyler’s How to Steal A Million, Audrey’s Givenchy wardrobe is maybe even more representative of the designer’s signature minimal fashion than in other films like Sabrina or Funny Face – a sophisticated, but very clean, essential, practical form of high fashion. It is the best reflection of the perfect synergy between Givenchy’s elegant lines and Audrey’s impeccable taste: it felt like they both designed the clothes. Memorable clothing pieces here would include the iconic white helmet, the unforgettable pink coat, the beige shift dress with sculpted front pockets, and the black lace eye mask.

photos: movie stills all captured by Classiq / “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (Paramount Pictures) / “Sabrina” (Paramount Pictures) / “Funny Face” (Paramount Pictures) / Charade (Stanley Donen Films) / “How to Steal A Million” (World Wide Productions)

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12 March 2018

Peter Lindbergh and His Movie Making Photographs

I remember coming across Peter Lindbergh’s “City of Angels” editorial of Amber Valletta shot in New York City, and inspired by Wim Wenders’ Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire), 1987, some time after I had watched the film. I could immediately pinpoint the influence, one of my all-time favourite movies, but I was also transfixed by the photographer’s interpretation, by his own visual narrative showing an angelic figure in a cold and dark city. The German director is a lifelong friend of Lindbergh’s and his film is but a small part of the huge influence that movies have had on the photographer’s work.

White Shirts: Estelle Lefébure, Karen Alexander, Rachel Williams, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patiz and Christy Turlington, Malibu, 1988, Vogue USA

He was the first fashion photographer to put models in nothing else but simple white shirts, no recognizable fashion, for a photo shoot. They were giggling on the beach, looking natural and casual, wearing hardly any make-up. This was never heard of before him. Peter Lindbergh offered a new interpretation of women post-1980s without paying too much attention to clothing, as it is noted in the book Peter Lindbergh: A Different Vision on Fashion Photography, one of the dearest and most beautiful photography books in my library, a stunning photographic collection of more than 400 Lindbergh images, many previously unpublished.

Peter Lindbergh never loses sight of the woman in his images – it is a special kind of woman, it is her personality, attitude, inner-self that shines through, not the clothes she’s wearing. “Peter is a photographer who will make photography history, because he is not linked to trends. He has his own identity: he is not a fashion photographer. He uses fashion to talk to women and to talk about women, which is very different,” said Franca Sozzani, the editor in chief of Vogue Italia for almost 30 years. Of all the fashion magazines Lindbergh has collaborated with, I have always considered the Italian Vogue the perfect platform for his stories. Maybe because Franca Sozzani’s Vogue, too, offered a new interpretation of fashion and went beyond boundaries, while emphasizing that visual storytelling is the most universal language. “Before fashion, I love images,” she would say.

“I wanted to move away from the rather formal, quite perfectly
styled woman who was very artificial. I was more concerned about
a more outspoken, adventurous woman in control of her life and
not too concerned about her social status or emancipated by
masculine protection. My ideal was always the young women I met
in art school, very independent and who could speak for themselves.
The supermodels represented this change. It explains why they
dominated the visual world for many years.”

Amber Valletta, New York, 1993, Harper’s Bazaar

He loves the classics. His photography is timeless, you can not place it in a particular decade or another; it does not date. His truth- and true beauty-revealing black and white images are grainy and cinematic. One of his biggest influences is the cinema, after all. He favours sets that remind him of the behind-the-scenes bonus features found on DVDs, which he prefers to the actual movies. The subtle play of light and shadow, the smoky atmosphere of his sets, the movie studio equipment, the cinematic framing and lighting, the fine line between reality and fiction – he likes to make his own movies. The models are his actors, and he lets them inhabit his movie sets.

“Black and white is interpretation of reality,
a more privileged connection to truth than color.”

Catherine Deneuve, Deauville, France, 1990, Vogue Paris

Linda Evangelista, Parma, Italy, 1990, Vogue Italia

The German Expressionist films with Asta Nielsen, Josef von Sternberg’s Blue Angel with Marlene Dietrich (“transforming par excellence, feminine but androgynous, totally unconventional”, one of the strong women he loves), Fritz Lang’s Metropolis were among his first cinematic influences. But his fascination with cinema went on to the Italian neo-realist films, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Mamma Roma, Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2, Luchino Visconti’s noir Ossessione, Marcel Carné’s Hôtel du Nord, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and The Birds, or Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas. Lindbergh reinterpreted all these films in his photographic stories, reinforcing the far-reaching power of cinema, advancing the language of fashion photography, but ultimately inventing his very own, distinctive visual universe.

Linda Evangelista, Corpus Christi, Texas, 1994, Harper’s Bazaar

Masculine/feminine, one of the recurring themes in Lindbergh’s photography
left: Linda Evangelista and Hugh Grant, New York, 1992, Harper’s Bazaar
right: Linda Evangelista, Brooklyn, New York, 1990, Vogue Italia

Lindbergh’s 1990 story with Helena Christensen and American actress Debbie Lee Carrignton as an alien from outer space was the beginning of science-fiction representation and cinematic suspense in his work, considered the first ever narrative story in fashion photography, drawing inspiration from his captivation with science fiction movies from the 1950s, like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), The War of the Worlds (1953), Invaders from Mars (1953), or E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial (1982). A different vision on fashion photography.

Marie-Sophie Wilson, Paris, 1988

“This should be the responsibility of photographers today:
to free women, and finally everyone, from the terror of youth
and perfection. Beauty coming from real values is a different
thing and it does not need retouching.”

photos: Classiq, of the book “Peter Lindbergh: A Different Vision on Fashion Photography”

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