Fashion in the mirror: the glamour horror

Tag : linen clothing


This was back in the early 1980s, when fashion somehow seemed a lotnastier and unprincipled, and photographers had ludicrously swollenegos. If the master had a vision, that vision had to be indulged.Later that day in Cairo I found myself faced with the task ofre-arranging small drifts of tiny pebbles - virtually invisible tothe naked eye - in a patch of desert in front of the pyramids.According to the photographer, the sand wasn't 'lying right'. ThenI had to assemble half a dozen reeking, unco-operative camels forpossible inclusion in the picture, while the people higher up thefashion food chain - photographer, hairdresser, make-up artist andmodel - sipped cool drinks in the shade.

This is the kind of thing that goes on at fashion shoots all thetime but isn't necessarily apparent in the flawless images that endup in magazines. When, more than 20 years ago, a fashion team and Itook a gorgeous fledgling model out to Crete to photograph puffballskirts on the beach it seemed like a perfectly delightful idea thatwould surely result in immaculately fresh and sexy photos. Whatcould possibly go wrong? Two words: Naomi Campbell. When herstroppiness became instantly apparent in the departure lounge atHeathrow our mission couldn't have felt more doomed if a voice fromthe flight-deck had told us we were heading, with low fuel andengine failure, straight for a mountain range in impenetrable fog.Retouching photographs wasn't a widespread practice then, but, bythe end of the shoot, these pictures badly needed it; she wascrying in most of them. Her objections were many and whiny: it wastoo cold, the clothes were too short/thin/pink. The wig wasrubbish. She was right about that: the wig was indeed rubbish, but,after five days of ceaseless tantrumming, the fashion team was sosick of her that a bit of wig humiliation in a national glossyseemed like delicious revenge.