regardless of my personal opinions on a model, you can't argue when they've just got skill. this editorial from the february harper's bazaar america featuring coco rocha and freja beha erichsen shows that the former is, i suppose despite all evidence to the contrary, quite a clever and insightful model. Long touted as the 'most fun' and the craziest, the girl who photographers would shoot for free and whom fashion interns say make the job worthwhile, coco rochas really knows how to model.
[tfs]
this editorial is not some fabulous conceptual arty piece where there is a great theme and excellent styling and even better photography. At the end of the day its studio shots for a commercial glossy, and even though it is harpers bazaar, these kinds of studio shots featuring an entire outfit from one paticular designer heralding the 'new' season is so redolent of vogue us these days. it is a shame when a magazine ostensibly about 'fashion' becomes so bogged down in the commercial and the money side of things. But then, the same could be said for man aspects of life at the moment. and when there is an economic crisis no-one wants artsy and avant-garde.
Anyway, my point about this shoot is to show you the first thing that caught my eye: look at how coco is posing. In all of them she is either kicking her feet up, drawing attention to the shoes, displaying her bag centre frame, clutching her various accesories (hat/ring), and of course her artfully slouchy poses make the clothes look so model-esque, and thus desirable. in short, she, and the clothes, look fabulous.
this is a girl who has shot over 20 ad campaigns for major brands like chanel, YSL, lanvin and dolce and gabbana, she knows how to make the different elements of an outfit, top bottom shoes bag, come together as an outfit on her person, but then also stand out as individual desirable pieces for the viewer. And she uses all that knoweldge to make this otherwise quite bland editorial on the 'hit pieces' of this s/s 09 season really jump out. I mean, the image with the red pants made me want to run out and buy those black and gold wedges (LV?) and shove my little fit into them as fast as i could, hopefully to try and look half as glamorous as miss coco.
so what's the important thing here, well, i don't really have an opinion on coca rocha, i think she's neither here nor there. but i have to admit that she has definitely got her head around the ultimate role of a model: selling expensive stuff to people who really can't afford it, like me. In high fashion editorials for the various magazines she has shot for, like vogue italia, V mag and purple she is quirky and crazy, her vibrant expressions and body language exuberant and over the top to match the clothes which are, more often than not, unwearable by majority of the population. But the point of those types of editorials is to entice the reader, to inspire their imagination and leave them dreaming of tens of thousands of dollars worth of balmain couture and stripper heels, or a hussein chalayan oragami pleat wide shouldered jacket in the manner of margiela.
But when she's working it for harpers bazaar she knows that crazy and over the top won't work for the average american housewife that buys the magazine for celebrity profiles and inoffensive but still relatively fashion forward editorials. Instead, she sticks on her best pout, jumps up and down, and sticks out the handbag.
is it because she knows that accessories are the biggest part of the luxury market in most countries and that shoes and handbags make up the bulk portion of what the average person can afford from the luxury big brand fashion business.
Or maybe she just thinks the bag looks pretty.
And she does it so subtly too! This isn't even me being sarcastic, i know it's nigh impossible to detect over a computer, and although at first glance it may seem painfully contrived, but when you actually look at the picture she's titling her foot ever so slightly towards the camera, which makes her ankle look smaller and thus the shoe look bigger, or she's clutching her bag at the clasp dead centre in the frama, keeping it flush against her outfit, thus showing it front on and at when it can make the biggest impact. Or her hand is acting as a vector, resting lightly on the hat and drawing your eye upwards to it. It's all about the subtleties, in advertising you can be very ostentatious, you can show a picture of a model shoving a bag in the lens of the camera as if forcing it onto the reader and that is considered tactful. In editorial you have to be a bit sneakier when you 'advertise' like this, especially because editorial must never be considered advertising, although 99% of the time it is.
Seriously though, it is few and far between now with models who can both successfully crack high fashion editorial and commercial ones. It requires a shrewdness of knowledge about the type of publication you're working for as well as the type of clothes you are wearing/selling, because in editorial you ARE selling the clothes, perhaps in an even more potent way than advertising, but that's a whole other post. Coco, the current Only GIrl for H&M, and a girl who proclaims multiply times to 'know nothing about fashion' is perhaps more savvy than we think.
You have to make the clothes look good, and ultimately desirable, after all, by making the reader get out of their seat and fork over the big bucks the publications earn their weight in gold with advertising fees. And with these pictures i think harper's bazaar just overtook vogue US, seriously. i mean, who wouldn't invest when you've got a model like coco rocha pimping your products in such a fabulous way?
good on her. i'm sure this one editorial is going to book her from here till kingdom come. and, for the record, i really like her red hair. if only others (like myself) had the courage to do the same.
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