ellastica

country feedback

2009-12-05T05:45:00.000-08:00

Designer Judyth Van Amringe escapes the city grind
and heads for the warmth of her backwoods hearthside.

Harper's Bazaar November 1993
Ph Francois Halard
Article by Wendy Goodman

something about maria

2009-11-13T02:50:00.000-08:00

Terms like 'It girl' and 'Icon' get thrown around a lot. Insert me here doing a lot of eye rolling. But ever since I laid eyes on this particular photo in W, I've been inexplicably magnetized by
Maria Hassabi in my style subconscious.

She's not all over the blogosphere or even a regular fashion magazine fixture. and that I suppose is part of her appeal for me.

It's nice to have a 'private icon.'

W Magazine December 2004
Ph Valerie Phillips

Liner Notes

2009-11-02T13:00:00.000-08:00

Make-up maestro Dick Page dishes on drawing the line.

US VOGUE August 1995
Ph Juergen Teller
Make-up Dick Page

Tunnel vision

2009-10-26T13:25:00.000-07:00

Transition from falling leaves
to falling snow, in a versatile turtleneck.

Harper's Bazaar October 1997
Article by Andrea Linett

Aquascutum F/W 2009

2009-10-12T00:00:00.000-07:00

A Timeless Sensibility

w/ Endless Possibilities...

UK VOGUE September 2009
Malgosia Bela shot by Tim Walker
Stylist Edward Enninful

Irving Penn (1917-2009)

2009-10-10T18:06:00.000-07:00

In Remembrance of things Past, Present and Future:

VOGUE c.1999

Double Vision

2009-09-27T00:30:00.000-07:00

Marianne Diorio's marketing flair and daring vs
down-to-earth, aesthetic duality,taps into
a universal beauty psyche:

VOGUE September 1995
Article Vanessa Friedman
Hair & Make-up John Rutledge
Ph Francoise Dischinger

roots radicals

2009-09-24T17:40:00.000-07:00

Guido Palau's mane attractions amplify the soul:

allure May 1996 ~ article Kathy Merrell
Ph Steven Klein ~ Make-up Dick Page
Fashion Editor Ricky Vider Rivers

Eileen Fisher

2009-09-22T00:23:00.000-07:00

Beautiful, versatile, wearable clothes.

Wishing I'd received this invite sooner than last week!

Px Retrospective

2009-09-19T01:45:00.000-07:00

A Fond Farewell to Prescriptives...

An eye-opening, familiar face:
allure c.1995

Everyday beauty and grace

VOGUE c. 1993

Sophisticated, grounded, on trend looks:

Back in the Day: Beauty Buzz

Ultra-modern sleek/textured packaging
VOGUE February 1996
By Amy Astley

Uplifting use of Color
Px catalogue c. 2006

Feel-good Fruit Slap
VOGUE c. 1994

Lauder-owned Prescriptives line soon to be relic.
However, Calyx to stick around.

PS Marianne Diorio article coming soon...

Necessary Objects

2009-09-14T11:35:00.000-07:00

An(extra)ordinary Irving Penn still,
moves designer Helmut Lang to find his groove:

Vogue January 2002
As Told to Eve MacSweeney
Ph Irving Penn

Originl skin

2009-08-30T00:00:00.000-07:00

No make-up, all Beauty:

allure February 1998
ph Francois Nars

Cheers!

2008-12-24T04:28:00.000-08:00

{ Happy Holidays }

Harper's Bazaar c. 1997

Marc Jacobs beaded indigo slip-ons
Ph. Raymond Meier

fade into you

2009-04-02T23:30:00.000-07:00

{ Charlotte's dream denim }

Stunning in her beloved vintage Levi's...

Stylist Melanie Ward

Ph. Van Lamsweerde & Matadin
Harper's Bazaar November 2000

US Vogue July 2002
Ph. Uli Weber

French Marie Claire c.2006
Ph. Luc Roux

violet femmes

2009-08-23T12:45:00.000-07:00

Mad for Deep Purple, eggplant, plum...

Isabella Rossellini (1995)

Stella Tennant (1995)

Brisa Roché (2007)

Alice Rawsthorn (2001)

Ramsay Jones (1996)

Yves Saint Laurent (2002)

(from allure, VOGUE, Marie Claire FR, Bazaar, Nordstrom)

On the edge

2008-12-21T15:46:00.000-08:00

So many prolific, personal style and image makers.
A collision of cutting-edge and mainstream...

Sozzani's ELLE

When writers reach for superlatives to describe 10 Corso Como, the Milan boutique-bookstore-gallery-cafe that Carla Sozzani opened in 1991, they usually compare it to a fashion magazine. Like a well-edited publication, Corso Como is organized around a belief that its patrons, many of them editors, are not so much buying the latest Prada or Comme des Garcons as they are Sozzani's point of view about these collections. There is also something about the store's open design that keeps you engaged, moving from one insight to the next, as the visual narrative of a magazine layout does.

  
David Rinella for The New York Times
 
{ A Patrick Cox fringed heel by Nick Knight;Naomi Campbell in Gianni Versace Couture by Steven Meisel;molto androgino by Peter Lindbergh.}

Sozzani was once an editor herself. For nine years, beginning in the late 1970's, she produced sister publications to Italian Vogue, like Vogue Bambini. She is also the sibling of Franca Sozzani, the editor of Italian Vogue, and these two connections are widely assumed to have influenced the style of Corso Como. But what few people know is that for eight months in 1987, Sozzani was the editor in chief of Italian Elle, an odd lacuna in her other careers as a muse (to Romeo Gigli) and retailer. Just three issues of Sozzani's Elle were produced, and they represent an aesthetic break in magazine publishing that was as rare in its beauty and influence as Anna Wintour's ten months at HG and even, perhaps, the more substantial Flair.

Certainly there was nothing in Italy that compared to the extreme stylishness of Sozzani's first issue, in October 1987, with a cover photo by Nick Knight showing Kirsten Owen in a green Claude Montana jacket and a red Benetton turtleneck, her face drenched in light. Inside were more Knight photographs, including a stark double-page image of a black-fringed shoe, as well as fashion spreads by Peter Lindbergh, Andrew Bettles and Paolo Roversi. In the front of the issue, tucked between a runway report and a beautifully displayed travel piece about Scandinavia, was an eight-page Bruce Weber portfolio on Georgia O'Keeffe. In fact, there would be nothing to compare Elle to until the following summer, when Franca Sozzani, who had been the editor of Lei, took over Italian Vogue and revamped it with the art director Fabien Baron. By then, Carla had turned her attention to Gigli's career, having been fired from Elle.

Fashion magazines in the 80's tended to reflect the power not of editors and art directors but of the designers who advertised in them. Italian Vogue, for instance, under the editor Franco Sartori, used to run designer credits on its covers, and the inside spreads were so respectful of the fashion houses that they amounted to early infomercials. In the same way, Anthony Mazzola's Harper's Bazaar in the 80's, with its babelike models and ''Fabulous Over 50!'' cover lines, seemed to share little in common with the magazine that was produced by Carmel Snow and the art director Alexey Brodovitch, or later Nancy White and Marvin Israel. ''The best writers, the best photographers'' were all published in Harper's Bazaar, Richard Avedon once said. ''And that was my dream, that was the pantheon.''

Small wonder that many new photographers, like Knight and Bettles, surfaced in indie magazines like i-D and The Face. The Brodovitch ideal of a double-page spread where text and photograph were equal, set off by white space, had been supplanted in the 80's by compromise and clutter. Carla Sozzani alone didn't remove these barriers, but considering that Elle was a commercial magazine, then owned by Hachette and Rizzoli, it was an odd place to make a stand with photography, design and journalism that went beyond the confines of fashion.

In 1986, tired of her job at Conde Nast and already working with Gigli, Sozzani told Alexander Liberman, Conde Nast's editorial director, that she was jumping ship to Elle. He counteroffered with a job as editor at large for American Vogue. She stayed for four months and left for Elle. ''It sounds really stupid to say this now, but all the magazines at that time, except for American Vogue, were only about fashion,'' she said in her office above Corso Como, crowded with books, art pieces by her boyfriend, Kris Ruhs, and an exceptional collection of photos. ''There was nothing to read. The magazines were always like catalogs. I had this idea of doing something that was a cross between Vogue and the weekly Elle, where you would have the news and sophistication of fashion but also the information of a weekly.'' She smiled, folding her hands in the lap of her black skirt. ''So the people at Hachette knew what I wanted to do. And they liked the idea because it was a new approach.''

Among the first people she hired was Robin Derrick, then 23 and the art director of The Face, where Neville Brody had influenced a generation of graphic designers. Derrick had worked with Bettles and Knight and Juergen Teller. As he put it: ''I had my kind of cool people from London, and Carla had the best of the old-school photographers, like Peter, Sarah Moon and Paolo Roversi. It was a great combination.'' He added: ''We spent three years' worth of money on three issues. We spent a fortune.'' Sozzani also brought in Steven Meisel and the stylist Brana Wolf; each had worked with her at Vogue Bambini. ''She was very clear about Elle,'' Wolf said. ''She wanted to make the most beautiful magazine in the world, and use the best photographers and visually do something very inspiring and not commercial. And that's probably why it lasted only three issues.''

Although the first issue of Elle, at 368 pages, was thick with articles, including pieces about food and home design, Sozzani and Derrick had upped the ante where photography was concerned. And just as Brodovitch had done in the late 40's and 50's with Avedon and Lillian Bassman -- and Dennis Freedman would do at W -- they were using visual pioneers to express the changes in fashion, especially from French mavericks like Jean Paul Gaultier and Christian Lacroix. And, of course, Gigli. Sozzani thought her superiors were pleased with the first issue. ''The trouble started later,'' she said, laughing. ''Well, later, 15 days.''

A group representing major Italian designers complained to the publishers that Sozzani was giving preferential treatment to foreign labels. They also saw a conflict in her involvement with Gigli. ''I read the telegram,'' Derrick recalled. ''Basically this group said that if the editorial direction of the magazine didn't change, they were going to withdraw their advertising.''

Glenda Bailey, the editor of Harper's Bazaar, prizes her copies of Elle and believes that if the covers had been more commercial, Sozzani might have remained.''Inside, it was actually a very warm magazine,'' she said.

Derrick explained: ''If there's an Elle brand, this wasn't it. It was a mass-market magazine designed like The Face and art-directed like Italian Vogue.'' Still, it was an exciting moment, and a turning point for Derrick, now the creative director of British Vogue. ''She's as tough as old boots to work with,'' he said of Sozzani, noting that when she didn't like a layout, she would say to him, coyly, ''You know, everyone likes this one better.'' He added with a laugh, ''Then I realized she was walking directly from her office into mine, and there was no 'everybody.'''

Sozzani, who would help bring Gigli to fame only to see their partnership end in a legal dispute, is seemingly sanguine over the Elle affair. Her firing, at least, had a perfect coda: ''They wanted me to say that I had resigned. I said: 'No, absolutely, no. Fire me. I am not ashamed.' I said: 'Diana Vreeland was fired. I am proud to be fired.'

And they said, 'Who's she?'''

fresh fashion

2009-03-14T22:38:00.000-07:00

stories of the street meets high fashion:

{ February 2000 cover shot by Craig McDean }

Kate Betts debuts a revisioned Harper's Bazaar
for a new generation...

sole searching

2009-04-19T14:55:00.000-07:00

{ these perfect navy sandals }

Harper's Bazaar c.2005

Gainsbourg GLAMOUR

2008-12-18T12:42:00.000-08:00

Charlotte's most memorable VOGUE cover shoot:

Impeccable. Classy. Graphic. Unabashed Glamour.

Vogue IT October 2000
Ph Steven Meisel
Styling Lori Goldstein

Dig It.

twisted sister

2009-05-21T21:05:00.000-07:00

This Iconic, renegade fashion stylist
works and plays outside of the conventional fashion box:

my unfinished collage

Melanie's pioneering diy,grunge ethos
echoed in her experimental (ward)robe remixes.

Harper's Bazaar September 1998
Ph Anthony Ward

whippet good!

2009-03-24T16:37:00.000-07:00

{ Leather goes luxe }

Helmut Lang cut-out ankle boots
Nippon Vogue April 2001

A cut above the rest:
Ann's Fall 1995 collection
Harper's Bazaar June 1995

Marisa Berenson wears Daryl K.
Harper's Bazaar June 2001

8 Women

2009-04-14T14:36:00.000-07:00

{Fashion tour de force}

Allure November 1995

shadowplay

2008-11-21T19:40:00.000-08:00

Lillian Bassman
Harper's Bazaar April 1949

Mario Sorrenti
Harper's Bazaar April 1998

skinhead breakdown

2008-11-03T11:01:00.000-08:00

the coolest family tree I've ever seen.
I live for stuff like this.

' Where have all the rude boys gone? '

Disco, Dalí, death metal

2008-11-06T15:31:00.000-08:00

Lene Lovich!

She's my dream women:
best off the wall style, angelic-gothic beauty,
recognized humanitarian/animal activist,
wild, animalistic vocal stylings,
creative-genre defying musical vision
and yes a dedicated cult following.