In the September issue of Interview magazine, there is a delicious pictorial starring Anne Hathaway shot by Wonder Twin powers of the fashion industry Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott. With Karl Templer on styling duties, the cover showcases a barely recognizable Anne with her face shielded beneath a black lace mask. Coupled with the Interview logo made-over in blood red, horror flick lettering, the image definitely feels a little Anne Rice-y vampiresque. (This is not a bad thing! Though, I actually thought darling Hathaway must be promoting a new Dracula movie or something. I was wrong.)
Inside though, the black and white images take on more of a gothic, Victorian-mourning sensibility with Anne decked out in various chiffon and corseted numbers from Dolce & Gabbana, Alexander McQueen, Bottega Veneta, and Dior.
This one image in particular struck me:
It reminded me of this photograph of Michael Jackson by Greg Gorman taken in 1987. Believe it or not, Michael wanted this to be used for the cover of his Bad album but the execs at Epic records were having none of it. (They said it was “too weird”. I say, they had “no vision”.) It’s a shame, since it really is a hauntingly lovely photo and very outside-the-box for the normally crystal-swathed MJ.
Similarly, there is also this 1980’s-era shot of Siouxsie Sioux by Jay Blakesberg.
They were all likely influenced by the photography of Edward Steichen and especially this moody shot of actress Gloria Swanson which appeared in Vanity Fair in 1924.
Steichen’s first forway into fashion photography occured in 1911, when French designer Paul Poiret enlisted him to shoot his latest collection for Art et Décoration magazine. Steichen captured the models using a soft-focus pictorialism that had never been used before in fashion, a style that was subsequently adopted by others. In 1923, he was hired as the chief photographer at Condé Nast, which published both VF and Vogue. It was there, shooting celebrity portraits and fashion editorials, where he introduced the sharp, dramatic, geometric techniques that would ultimately make him a legend.