Vogue Paris: Cadeaux

Don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya, Carine.

Vogue Paris December 2010/January 2011 Issue
Editorial: "Cadeaux"
Photographed by Sharif Hamza
Styled by Melanie Huynh

EW. Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew. We are going to need some industrial strength eye bleach to wash this one away. Vogue Paris once again struggles mightily to produce something edgy and controversial to get tongues wagging on several continents. Well, mission accomplished, we suppose.







Even though her name isn't in the credits, outgoing EIC Carine Roitfeld's fingerprints are all over this one. Getting past the squick factor (which is, admittedly, very difficult to do), we just don't get the point of this editorial. Clearly, putting couture on 6 year-old girls is not the best way to showcase the designs, nor, we imagine, does it induce anything in the viewer but horror and revulsion. We're trying to picture the distaff version of this and we simply can't do it. No editor or stylist would put 6-year-old boys in menswear because, well, because that would be stupid. But also because we can't imagine any fashion-minded male responding positively to such a thing. Granted, we can't imagine any fashion-minded female responding well to these images either, especially in light of the fashion and beauty industry's predilection for using teenage girls to sell products to adult women.

Is this supposed to be some sort of cheeky commentary on the youth-obsessed fashion industry? A little nod and wink to the reader? We just don't get it. It's gross and it never should have seen the light of day. What's perhaps most galling of all is that the industry and industry commenters haven't denounced this with any real force. Oh, sure. There's been some hand-wringing over this, but no real questions have been asked. It seems that to a lot of people, this editorial was simply a momentary lack of taste rather than the natural culmination of decades of fetishizing youth to the masses.

[Image Credit: thefashionspot.com]

Post a Comment

Labels: Fashion, Magazine Cover/Editorial, Vogue