The first issue of i-D, August 1980. Designed by Terry Jones.
I have a love hate relationship with online slang. The internet land shorthand can get out of hand, and the elllloonnngatttiiiiooonnn ooooffff woooorrrdddsss drives me bananas, but the one thing I couldn't do without are the winky, smily, sad-faced little emoticons that help make typed-word-only convos a little more human. In this post, I pay homage to one of the first major communication vehicles to make big-time use of the graphic representation of an emotion: i-DMagazine. See it winking at you? It's been doing that since it's first issue (above) published 30 years ago. I was just reading a NYT article that cited the name of the fashion glossy and I winked back. Here, in all of it's glory is the winky wink and it's long tradition of cover girl imitations.
Why the wink? Because it's cheeky like all things British should be. Thanks for so many years of so much fun i-D. Wink on.
The ever-brilliant Steven Meisel flips a switch and brings digital technology to the printed page. His latest editorial for Vogue Italia features a paper Twitter feed filled with supermodels in grainy cell phone-like pics. The layout matches the blue bird's site exactly and I had to resist the urge to mouse and click the mag pages.
Meisel's Twitterific layout that features the heavy hitters of modeling: Kristen, Freja, Linda, Hannah, Agy and others.
It's pretty phenomenal and fearless of a photographer who has made his major mark in print to embrace the quick-shot, usually low quality product that the Twitter tech offers. Meisel is a genius of the magazine medium, and even though the medium is dwindling, I'm sure he'll transition nicely. I'll be sad when all of the fashion photos I view glow rather than crinkle, but I'm open to change. I think it's inevitable, and so does Steven Meisel apparently.
Mr. Steven Meisel is unparalleled in the field of popular fashion photography. He is the industry's greatest living, working talent. He still uses his genius eye to pluck girls from relative obscurity and sky rocket them to fame via his covers of Italian Vogue (of which he has shot every single one since 1988), or his shoots for American Vogue. Just like the models say in the Cathy Horyn praised May Vogue profile of the super photographer, Meisel changed my relationship to fashion. In fact he opened my eyes to a whole new world. This exact shoot, for the pages of Vogue's December 1992 issue, was my first addictive dose of amazing fashion photography.
I was 10. I was so besotted with Kristin McMenamy's eyebrowless, chiseled face, and her dark hair, and pale skin that I clipped her picture from the glossy mag and taped it into my grade school diary (see first photo above!). There was something absolutely magic about it. I can even feel it now when I look at it. I think the idea that a woman could look that strange, that different, and be the main attraction in a Vogue portfolio just totally cracked my ten year old world view wide open. That's Meisel's magic; take the quirky beauty (or classic, whatever) and highlight her amazing features until she looks like an otherworldly creature who somehow alighted on earth through divine intervention. His talent for doing so is unmatched and has been for about 30 years. Kristen and the elusive Steven creature are both snapped by the photog in the new May Models issue of Vogue.
In his profile writer Jonathan Van Meter makes much of Steven's reclusive nature, and I'm thinking maybe I've discovered the reason behind it. Maybe Mr. Meisel is just hiding from this cameo he made in the 1983 film Portfolio, which has surfaced on the internets thanks to Youtube.
I must admit that I cannot say with confidence whether this video is the real deal or not, but I think it could be. Either way, don't worry Steven, your genius far outweighs your early penchant for frosty lipgloss. And anyways, it was the '80s! We as a nation were in love with Paula Abdul and puffy sleeves, thus all indiscretions are null and void. You can come out of hiding. Have a splashy museum retrospective, put out a giant book, or maybe dance down fifth avenue with Linda on your arm. Whatever you want. You can do no wrong.
