Make Love. Not War.

{Make Love Not War // Vogue Italia // September 2007 // Models: Agyness Deyn, Missy Rayder, Caroline Trentini, Raquel Zimmermann, Julia Stegner, Daniel Pimentel, Blaine Cook, Chad Dunn, Chad White, Isaac Haldeman, Nathan Nesbitt, Oraine Barrett, Rodrigo Calazans, Travone Hill // Ph.: Steven Meisel // image source}

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Whomever assumes fashion to be merely the epitome of superficial materialism says such a statement with great ignorance. I am hardly disregarding the aspects of the fashion industry that truly are notorious for frivolity – because it does exist. But it is unfair that minute areas of the industry become the very label that fashion itself is stereotyped to be. Fashion is beyond the clothes we wear on our backs; it possesses depth in which the majority of the population haven’t yet seen. In that case, Miranda Priestly would straighten you on that front.

Nor are fashion magazines simply filled with fluff. Witty articles written by contributors are oftentimes forgotten (ELLE seems to publish the best, in my humble opinion). And everything else featured in a single issue of the magazine is a work of art: a designer’s perspective executed into some form of apparel or accessory, a story told by a photographer through an editorial. The amount of depth and work that is put into each issue is taken for granted. Editorials, in specific, have been greatly overlooked. To some extent it is about the presentation of the designer apparel and accessories; but beyond the surface of pre-positioned models in fabulous clothing and specialized lighting, the photographer behind the lens is telling his or her story. An idea, a perspective, a point of view.

Steven Meisel, an esteemed photographer for US and Italian Vogue, was the man behind the editorial “Make Love, Not War” featured in Vogue Italia September 2007. The running story was deemed controversial almost immediately; was it propagandistic and simply crude? Or was it a story laden with both symbolism and Meisel’s take on the war – specifically the war in Iraq? Feminists marked it as the former, disgusted at how violence was depicted as erotic, and how the models were portrayed in the semi-nude that bordered on light pornography. Others called it crude, sex-filled “American trash”. Also known as “bad art.”

But there is no such thing as bad art.

Or good art, for that matter. Art is only as good as the viewer interprets it to be, depending on how far in depth you wish to analyze. A first glance at “Make Love Not War” may insinuate erotica in violence, or perhaps seeming to be yet another of those superficial attempts at symbolic messaging through fashion. After all, the models are clad in muddy, designer gowns that showcase bare upper bodies, positioned suggestively across the male, uniform-clad models.

Yet through my eyes Steven Meisel has created a brilliantly composed editorial. The gowns themselves are showcased beautifully, the juxtaposition of utilitarian crudeness with glamour resulting in balance and dimension. Each photo portrays the darkness of war almost word for word – the tension, sex, violence, and downward spiraling of morality – as well as what truly happens in the barracks. The ugliness of  about war is portrayed, ironically, with beauty and vulgarity. Beauty to please Vogue readers, vulgarity to shock the ignorant.

Is it blasphemous of me to declare that I do not support the war in Iraq, particularly on a day that requires me to be patriotic? Perhaps. I should hope I will not be labeled as some heretic socialist or anarchist against my own country. I love the United States, regardless of its ups and downs, or the choices of our nation’s leaders make. I am an advocate and lover of democracy, a girl who relishes in her freedoms and believes wholly and fully in freedom of speech. So in seeing Meisel’s photography for this particular shoot, I had, in a sense, put my own beliefs into his work to interpret the editorial. Whether or not Meisel intended for his photographs to be a representation of his distaste for the war in Iraq will never be known until he reveals it; but I had seen the series as such. The desperation, the moral decline, the ugliness that happened under certain commanders is almost obvious in my eyes. The leisurely way in which the models are positioned – hanging about and the likes – seem to imply the question I have asked myself many times since 2001. Why are we in Iraq? Do our troops belong there? And for what are they fighting for? Terrorism cannot ever be tangible – it is as elusive as fog: we can see it, but we cannot grasp it. It only seems as if this war was a meaningless crusade of which we had no place to be. I laugh as I re-read this – it is quite obvious I am an unabashed Democrat, and quite the fan of President Obama. But I digress. My main point has eluded me in all my nonstop rambling, thoughts flooding to my fingertips as they type madly.

There is depth to fashion. Fashion – whether through design or editorials – is representative of our generation. The cultures, the ideals, the controversies, the events – all of which are reflected through what we wear. Because in the end, clothing represents not just ourselves as individuals, but ourselves as a whole.

For my darling American readers, happy Independence Day!

And for all others, I wish you a happy fourth of July.

bisous,

La C.