Italian Vogue's Trash is V's Treasure

V Magazine Winter 2008/09

Oh those uptight European fashion magazines with their full frontal nudity and avant-garde imagery. Will they ever lighten up?

It's not often that European fashion magazines deem photo spreads too racy, but that's the case with photographer Steven Meisel's new "dogging" inspired shoot. Italian Vogue declined running the pictures but with recession-era America's new found austerity, V Magazine has published them instead.

Dogging is the British term for having sex in public, usually with someone watching, and these photographs, with models Anna Selezneva, Iris Strubegger and Daul Kim, give off more of an eerie feeling than a sexy one. The night vision photographs with limited color are a little creepy and a little beautiful, but definitely not pretty. Wonder why Italian Vogue turned them down. Could it be they're still on their do-good-for-Africa high horse?

Stone Cold

Model Lara Stone first made an impact on me in V Magazine's "Home Improvement" shoot. Then I started noticing her as the girl with the horrific runway walk. Then I began to look out for the model with the gap in between her teeth. Soon I didn't stop seeing her nude in spreads, with her big boobs (compared to the average waif model). Lara Stone is not your typical model--in fact, she's the anti-model, and she's my favorite.

Lara is the cover star for the November issue of i-D, a perfect pairing for the fashion-forward magazine with attitude. As my good friend tells me, Lara Stone's sexiness could turn my friend gay, and turn gay men straight, so it's no surprise the tag line reads, "Yes, I think I'm sexy." The article explains her signature Frankenstein walk down runways ("her feet are a whole size smaller than the sample size") and her aptitude for body-baring shoots:

"Better naked than wearing really tight corsets. I don't put myself in situations that I feel uncomfortable with, you know, someday my children are going to see this. My tits are not really that big."

Lara, who had a rebellious streak that got her kicked out of school, still listens to her parents:

"Everyday my mum looks at style.com and fashionspot.com to see my pictures. The first time she saw me naked she sent this whole long big email, that was sooo sweet. She had seen the pictures from Purple by Inez and Vinoodh of me, butt naked, stood in the studio. She was like 'Lara, if you don't want to do this, you can just say no, you can always move back home with us.' "

On a sad note, the i-D editorial spread, "Between a Rock and a Hard Place," features the late male model Randy Johnston alongside Stone. Johnston, notably starring in the Dior Homme Fall 2007 campaign, died under unknown circumstances on October 11 at the age of 20. It's always sad to see someone young die, made more tragic when they are young and beautiful.

And to keep your fashion taste buds going through October, be sure to check out this month's Numero with two incredible spreads: Siri Tollerod evoking a creepy doll-yielding Joan Crawford in "Mommie Dearest" and Edita Vilkeviciute in the best recent example of proper photoshop effects in "Interférence."

Prescription: Subscription

V Magazine will always be a favorite. It's spreads are thought-provoking, its content extends beyond trends and its sheer large size makes the magazine and its images feel important and valuable. It's the monthly mainstream offshoot of Visionaire, the avant-garde publication centered around a fundamental theme.

So to my surprise, I discovered that V lowered its annual subscription from $40 to $10! It's brother publication (actually doing better than V) VMan also lowered its subscription rate to $10 as it changes from biannual to monthly this October. You know my checkbook came out for that deal, and so should your's.

But the lowered price makes me wonder if V will be going in a cheaper direction, not only in price but in content too. Its former editor Christopher Bollen jumped ship to the new Interview Magazine (another ultimate favorite of mine), marking a turning point for Visionaire-cofounder and current V Magazine editor Stephan Gan. The last issue with glamazon Gisele on the cover was pretty lackluster. Was it an attempt to make their magazine more mainstream, or just a summer issue slump? Though this month's issue with 14 different black-and-white covers of top models (my favorite of course is dutch model Lara Stone) is their biggest issue yet. We'll see how it plays out over the next year now that we're subscribed.