I admit that my Art Deco obsession reached insane levels between Philadelphia and New York, but I swear that, when I took this picture, I didn’t have in my mind any posts on the New Yorker Hotel and on its ziggurat-like shape.
I confess I’m finding it hard not to write an entire post about this late '20s building (it actually opened its doors in January 1930) designed by the architectural firm Sugarman and Berger in typical Art Deco style, but I’ll avoid doing it before some of my readers call the Art Deco police and get me arrested for my unhealthy obsession. Besides, as I said, there was something else on my mind when I took this picture.
Indeed the red “New Yorker” sign and the grey colours prevailing in the picture reminded me the 7th November 1994 issue (that also featured the articles "Portrait of a Dress" by Hal Espen and "Lunch with Mr. Armani, Tea with Mr. Versace, Dinner with Mr. Valentino," by Stephen Schiff) of The New Yorker with a cover illustrated by Art Spiegelman, the American comics artist and author of Pulitzer Prize-winning comic book (in 1992) Maus.
Spiegelman was hired by Tina Brown in 1992 and actually worked for The New Yorker for ten years, resigning a few months after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
The cover I had in mind showed a detail from a catwalk show with a row of distracted and naked fashion critics and photographers in the background sitting, talking and taking pictures, and a model’s feet in red shoes with straps wrapped around her ankles and legs in the foreground.
Spiegelman actually managed to tell us more about fashion weeks in this cover (also a reference to Robert Altman's Prêt-à-Porter, released in December 1994, with its final scene featuring nude female models walking the catwalk) than many popular photographers currently hired to document contemporary street trends and fashion weeks.
I would love to see what Spiegelman would come up with if he had to illustrate one of the current catwalk shows full of modern poseurs and vapid celebrities.
Illustrations and cartoons can indeed be more thought-provoking than photographs and I do feel it would be nice to see every now and then an illustration on the cover of a fashion magazine rather than the umpteenth picture of the model of the moment.
I’m indeed totally sick of seeing digitally retouched gap-toothed (yes, that's another demented current trend…) models on the cover of fashion magazines and I feel that we need the art, outrage and intelligent commentary that only the aesthetics of comics could provide us with.
In fact, could Mr Spiegelman please come up with a series of Garbage Pail Kids featuring designers, editors, pretentious style icons, fashionistas and such likes, possibly sold in miniature plastic garbage cans like the Garbage Candy series? Say yes, please!
PS Feeling inspired by this cover, illustrations, comics and Art Spiegelman? Read Art Spiegelman: Conversations edited by Joseph Witek.
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