The previous post closed with a precise period of time, the late '70s, so let's start from there and get inspired today by a photograph of model Vivienne Lynn taken around in 1979.
The picture was taken by the late Australian photographer Robyn Beeche who captured between the late '70s and the early '80s the spirit of London. Some of her most famous images portrayed jeweller and sculptor Andrew Logan, fashion designers Zandra Rhodes and Vivienne Westwood, accessory designer and artist Judy Blame, performers Divine and Leigh Bowery, Steve Strange, co-founder of the Blitz Club in Covent Garden, and many more including model Sonia Year wearing a striking hat by Stephen Jones.
Beeche's use of lighting and very unique and creative make up often transformed her models into sculptures: in quite a few of her portraits the models are endowed with a terrific theatricality, besides no boundaries seem to exist between genders, or reality and fantasy.
Beeche celebrated the power of transformation through fashion: in this portrait – entitled "Vivienne, a look from the '80s" – Lynn is wearing heavy white theatrical make-up and a large white collar by designer Willie Brown. The arrows on her forehead and eyebrows and on the road-like collar are perfectly traced and well-measured and she looks like a mysteriously enigmatic character.
Beeche proved with her photographs – often suspended between art and fashion – that looking fashionable doesn't mean splashing money on piles of designer clothes, but using your creativity in visually striking ways.
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