In the past decade, sisters Dakota and Elle Fanning have not only emerged, but grown up before our very eyes into the most prolific teenage stars of our day. Both known for their ability to size up a role at an unbelievably young age, these glamorous siblings can never seem to do the cameraman any wrong.
Current projects include a ghostly role for Elle in Francis Ford Coppola’s newest, Twixt, and as Scarlett Johansson’s daughter in Cameron Crowe’s upcoming, We Bought a Zoo. As for Dakota, you can see her on the big screen in her return role as Jane in Breaking Dawn. But surely, we will be seeing MUCH more of them both in the future.
I have always been an avid fashion editorial follower and have been rejoicing ever since they’ve become easier and easier to track down. However, in the mean time I have been waiting patiently for an online forum which features fashion films, not just editorials. Essentially, what I wanted was a Fashion Youtube, and I have found just that.
W Magazine has come to my rescue and granted my wish by dedicating an entire part of their site to Fashion On Film.
After watching a few of the films featured on their site, I have fallen in love with the short fashion film. The film is Modelgeddon, uploaded to W Magazine for their Fashion On Film Festival which was guest curated by Hervé Mikaeloff. Modelgeddon was created for LOVE Magazine as a collaboration between director James Lima and Donatella Versace. The short film features supermodels Alessandra Ambrosio, Ana Beatriz Barros, Claudia Mason and Julie Ordon as actual superheros.
For this series, Cattelan casts supermodel Linda Evangelista as an image of the fashion victim as martyr and saint. Dramatic photographs of Evangelista are placed between loaded images of burning peace signs and blood red meat. This series is arranged to lead the viewer through a slightly disturbing and politically charged world created by Cattelan.
I am totally infatuated with Pierpaolo Ferrari’s work, as he is one of my favorites from the Milan fashion scene. I found Pierpaolo’s work when I became friends with a couple of his assistant photographers in New York (including Alberto Zanetti, who was featured in August on our blog post Duty For Beauty). When I moved to Milan, I was even able to go behind the scenes of a few of his shoots.
Pierpaolo Ferrari treats his photo shoots as if setting up a scene for a movie with an actress. The model is integral to his photograph, as an actress to a play/movie, and he makes the props and set for her to work with. The relationship of the model to the set is one of the reasons that Ferrari’s photography works so well with Cattelan’s style.
Cattelan says this of working with the goddess of modeling, Linda Evangelista: “She’s a still actress. At the end, she was so tuned-in that all she needed were a couple of words and she knew what we wanted.”
