Since we are coming to the end of the year, it's only appropriate to make a year end best of list... But rather than make a fresh attempt at a specific category, Ive gathered a podge of some of my favorite fashion-photo-centric tidbits from 2008...ten of them in no particular order....
1) Vanity Fair, Year in Pictures part one and two-- From an American Solider in Afghanistan to that questionable picture of Miley Cyrus, the Vanity Fair wrap-up is one of the best around. With a staff of photographers consisting of Annie Leibovitz and Mark Seliger it would be silly not to over-promote the images.... Along with the magazine greats, the museum show
'Vanity Fair Portraits' launched in February at the National Portrait Gallery in London, and will continue to travel throughout the year.
2) Juergen Teller shoots Marc Jacobs-- The esteemed grit of Juergen Teller once again belongs to Marc Jacobs. I fell in love with Teller after reading a
piece in New York Magazine about his career. Opposing the glamarama of traditional fashion photography, Teller paved the road for the stark and full-flash look that is now ubiquitous in fashion ad campaigns. My personal favorites the year?
M.I.A for Marc by Marc Jacobs in the spring campaign, and
Victoria Beckham's dangling legs.
3) Terry Richardson: From Supreme to Tom Ford--Two campaigns represent the diversity in Richardson's work for the year: the oh-so-youthful
Kermit the Frog shoot for Supreme, and reaching over to the opposite end of the spectrum, the
semi-pornographic campaign for Tom Ford. How can you not love a man that can jump from the muppets to smut in the blink of an eye!
4) Eva Mendes for Vogue Italy shot by Steven Meisel-- I love
Italian Vogue. It makes the American version look like a Disney Movie to its X17. The semi-nude photo shoot of Eva Mendes provoked a lot of buzz on the blogs, but in reality, the images were absolutely fantastic.
5) Italian Vogue The Black Issue- Vogue began in 1916, and a black model didn't grace its cover until 1976... and there has been a disproportion ever since. When The Black Issue was released earlier this year, it accounted for an
explosion in the fashion world, causing magazines to rethink the disparity of black models NOT gracing their covers.
6) The Sartorialist in Chelsea-- A street-style trend hit the interwebs in 2008, promoting an August Sanders-esque look at street-life in urban centers. The most popular of these street-fashion blogs was
'The Sartorialist' written and photographed by ex men's fashion director Scott Schuman.
The New York Times Magazine recently came out with an article listing some additional street-style sites "Face Hunter, Style-Arena, Stockholm Street Style", but none quite match up to the fame of The Sartorialist. With a blockbuster show at Danziger Galleries in New York, and an additional inclusion in Danziger's most recent show
'Sander's Children', Schuman made the leap from DIY blogger to successful fine art photographer.
7) ICP's announcement, The Year in Fashion-- The International Center of Photography is kicking off their 2009 season with a fashion-centric showcase. Seven exhibits featured over the course of '09 will examine how fashion imagery has effected women over the last 90 years. "
Weird Beauty" kicks off the year, and will explore how modern technology, digital manipulation, and the overabundance of the airbrush, have changed our fashion standards.
8) The New York Times Style Magazine: The Videos-- From the beautifully simple and rough-cut
"Screen Test" series, to the improvisational
T Takes shot mostly at Sundance, the Video section of T Magazine online is a fresh assortment of multimedia. Although T Magazine launched in December of 2007, I think the continuously growing video section of this online fashion magazine is one of the strongest in the style world.
9) Superheros: Fashion, Fantasy, and The Box Office-- Superheros: Fashion and Fantasy was at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art earlier this year, an exhibit juxtaposing superhero prototypes to their runway contemporaries. The graphic body, the patriotic body, the virile body;
Bernhard Willhelm,
Catherine Malandrino,
Alexander McQueen... And we saw this obsession with the virile, the armored, the paradoxical within Edward Norton's The Hulk, Robert Downey Jr's Iron Man, and Christian Bale's Batman. It was a year for the superhero, even though the economic downturn matched the bleakness of Gotham City, and not the indestructibility of Iron Man.
10) Michelle Obama- A Future Fashion Icon-- It seems like there hasn't been this much positive buzz (including articles titled,
Why the Fashion Industry Needs Michelle) around the wardrobe of a First Lady since Jackie O. From the website
'Mrs. O' to the
'Michelle Obama Fashion Retrospective' on the Black Snob, to the buzz building around inauguration choices (we are thinking
Tracy Reese...) Michelle's attire is photogenic. And, according to a bit of gossip news, Michelle
might grace the March cover of Vogue... an interesting tie-in to #5 on my list for the year.
These are some of my favorites, please post if you have anything else to share...