In a previous post I compared Helmut Newton’s 1986 campaign for the late Italian designer Gianni Versace and the fashion house’s Autumn/Winter 2010 collection.
Also next season’s Versus collection, designed by Christopher Kane, has a strong connection with photography since it features T-shirts and bags with prints of shots by Bruce Weber for Versace matched with black, electric blue and plum pleated skirts and cardigans and worn with laced-p biker boots.
The recent Versus collection reinforced in many ways the link between Gianni Versace and photography.
As underlined also in my previous post on Newton and Versace, the designer often stated that his campaigns had to portray the muse he had in mind when he designed his creations, namely a strong, confident yet feminine woman.
That's why when looking for photographers who could shoot his designs, Versace would search for artists who had impeccable technical skills but also shared with him his vision.
Fashion changes - the designer claimed - but so do women, and finding a photographer who could portray season after season a new type of woman, while making sure that the dresses were the protagonists of the shoot, was often hard.
Versace chose David Bailey to shoot his Spring/Summer 1985 campaign.
Considering his work as intriguing and fascinating, the designer had always admired Bailey and followed his career from the early days, being also inspired by the figure of the photographer, based on Bailey himself, in Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow up.
The resulting shots from this collaborations featured models wearing Versace swimsuits or evening wear and male models wrapped up in coarse linen shrouds held together by thick ropes.
The male models had a sort of mummy-meets-corpse look and at the time the campaign raised a few eyebrows.
Critics often rebuked Versace since in his work he used references that were considered unacceptable in designer fashion.
For example, the designer had taken the figure of the prostitute and turned her into a creative force, employing the streetwalker’s wardrobe to brandish women’s sexuality and independence.
Prostitute style was always present on Versace’s runways, but it was also represented in the advertising campaigns.
In Bailey’s campaign the violent physical abuse associated with prostitutes was projected on men, portrayed as enslaved partners (or maybe customers?) wrapped in shrouds and bound in ropes, while women turned into dominant and self-defining figures.
There may have been no blood in this shoot, but the atmosphere anticipated of a few years and portrayed in reverse erotically violent situations à la Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho.
If you are into David Bailey's work, you may want to check out the selling exhibition "Pure Sixties. Pure Bailey" that recently opened at London's Bonhams (and that will be on until 7th April).
You won’t find there any mummies or corpses being abused by models clad in Versace designs, but plenty of iconic looks and legendary faces from the 60s.
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