Roe Ethridge for Gucci’s New Contemporary
Keywords: bold, floral, feminine, flowers, dirt, class, red and close up.
Alessandro Michele has dispensed four chapters in this new collection with a strong creative ability, blurring the lines of gender by casting males in womenswear collections and women in menswear collections, wearing similar looks that could have been designed for either sex. In detail, these clothes are treasures. There is a tiny hand-embroidered romantic floral embellishment and it’s hard not to notice that each ring is made out of different, gold-pleated elements and precious stones.
The compostion of the shot uses a rule of third, the subject is not in the middl eof the fra,e but in the left side making the plant compost more visible to the audience. The model’s whole body is specifically not in the whole frame because I think Roe Ethridge decided to focus on the texture of the flowers and how they relate to the compost which is right next to her head. because he wanted to swap the roles of the two genders, the model is meant to be a gardener which to be honest is not only a mans role as women tend to look after flowers and garden more than men do, however they might be used for labour jobs such as digging and moving plants. The use of the objects shows that the photographer is bringing an elemt of the outside, inside the studio. Fashion is just a matter of differentation. The flower compost is the element made to be stored in soil and that element is being brought into the studio where the model wears a flower suit implicating a real-life living flower.
The author “Walter Benjamin” states from ‘Paris,The Capital of the Nineteenth Century’:
“Fashion stands in opposition to the organic. It couples the living body to the inorganic world.To the living it defends the right of the corpse.The fetishism that succumbs to the sex appeal of the inorganic is its vital nerve”.
Guy Bourdin, Vogue 1975
Keywords: edgy, scary, fashion, realistic, fantasy and framed.
This photograph is composed of two female models marching on the streets feeling really confident and prestige while three mannequins are posed as if they were reaching or staring at them. This reminds me of a frame being fitted inside a frame because of the window having the models inside this rectangular body. Robert Frank states: “I’m always looking outside trying to look inside, trying to tell something that’s true. But maybe there isn’t any truth and there is only what is out there and that is always different”. In my opinion Frank is trying to say that people on the streets look inside the glass frames to see numerous styles and new clothes and therefore we have a guide on how to look but maybe the answer is not inside but within us, outside. The shop windows seem dull and drained of energy compared to the live, colourful, bright cheerful light out on the street. I think that the photographer wants us viewers to see that the mannequins are transfering their energy of clothes onto the living bodies of the streets and that embraces the purpose of what they are actually used for, for delivering a sense of style, edge and modern/contemorary fashion.
Damian's Reflective Journal 