Simone Colina

Speaker Right. A day in the life of a fashion stylist is schlep, schlep, schlep. And when you’re lucky, it’s think, think, think about the pictures that you’re gonna do because there’s so much involved before you get to the point of taking the picture that it’s incredible. I mean, if I’m doing an advertising campaign and all the clothes exist and I don’t have to rush out and get anything and I have to show up with pins, there still might be a coronate a deal with signing things in customs, getting 17 trunks to a studio, getting the whole thing steamed out and organized before a photographer or a client is ever allowed to look at it. And if I’m doing champagne ad or nothing exists, it goes from the glasses to the shoes to the tissue. The roses are wrapped into everything. But I think more important than being just a fashion lady is really relating to the situation, like helping create a situation so you can photograph it.

Speaker Your relationship to Dick and how the two of you work together and and Dick singular style, how that’s different from other working styles and photographers that you work with as well. So you get an understanding of just how he works and how he gets what he wants and how you work with.

Speaker In terms of unique, in terms of the unique way of working with Dick Avedon, I think a lot of it boils down to the fact that he doesn’t necessarily regard tension as a negative aspect. He takes the tension that exists everywhere in a situation and uses it to sort of bring up the whole vibe in this work that’s going on. It’s not just him until it has to be when it’s just Dick and the person in front of the camera. That subject feels totally connected with this photographer. But he doesn’t sacrifice his connection with everybody who’s working on the picture at all. It’s just he can manage to be. Total this way and total that way. And I’m standing next to him and I feel like we’re the only two people standing there looking at this. Image, looking at this, whatever the format is, looking at the square, this rectangle or whatever it is, and looking at every bit of space in it. The model and the space the model doesn’t occupy. I mean, the positive space being the subject, the negative space being the empty space and just having a direct relationship with him in terms of we are looking at the same thing. We might have different appreciations and different values on what the thing is. But when we’re there together working on an image, then I have to be extending myself from him, away from this subject and totally just really subjective by it’s not making somebody laugh. It’s not making, you know, a joke and getting that spontaneous picture. It’s sort of. Making sure your part is covered so that what’s gonna happen will happen, not to force it to happen, but just to make sure that every single thing is right for it to happen, because it will. And that assumption and that conviction and that consistency that this will occur.

Speaker Just to travel back to to get some concrete details. And you worked with a number of photographers from the very beginning when they are conceiving of the idea of that particular. Sitting right to the. Just tensions working. You know what?

Speaker Not just with you. Also, just get it.

Speaker That’s really hard. I mean, I’m not living in Dick’s head. I’m watching and I’m learning and something that doesn’t occur to me very much. Ever. Not just photographers with everybody that occurs with Dick all the time. That’s phenomenal. That, I think is different about Dick is that he is not shut down his capacity and willingness to learn.

Speaker It’s always learning something, even if it’s not about him or about the situation at hand, it’s always assuming that other people are the same and they have the capacity and the space to learn. And it’s all about seeing. It’s very singular. It’s about seeing. It’s not just about the fashion picture. It’s not just about the beauty picture. It’s about to make this. To capture this explosive thing without fracturing it, and I think he’s really sensitive to it and that might sound a little bit esoteric, but. To allow the thing that’s strong and evident to come. Right in front of the lens is something I don’t I’ve never witnessed it like that.

Speaker I mean, I’m sorry, it sounds hokey. I’m not saying it’s magic. It’s just innate within Dick. Is this thing where he’s not. I’m gonna create this and it’s gonna be, you know, and we’re gonna make this girl look like, you know, nobody’s ever seen her.

Speaker It’s like we all assume that’s gonna be true because he always does that and he may or may not take it for granted, but he knows it’s gonna happen. But to get a realization or a total blockage or whatever it is that’s existing here to come right to the middle and capture it is it’s different. I’m sorry. I can’t think of anybody else that successfully pulls that off all the time. And even when he surprised himself, it’s still happened.

Speaker It always happens with Dick for a models.

Speaker Well, Dick is probably a photographer. I collaborate with the most of all photographers in terms of. Sure. I might not work with him 365 days a year and I might work with another photographer 50 days and only 30 with DEC. But we never come together without sitting down and talking to each other first about what this picture is gonna be. We get down before Versace campaign and sit down with the hairdresser and the makeup artist and, you know, if necessary, a choreographer and, you know, an amuse, you know, and it’ll just be like me. Dark hair and makeup. You know, Francois Yanni can do an arbors, you know, and just sit there and talk about what’s inspiring us right now and how can we apply it.

Speaker To making these pictures take us through one of their Sakshi can be what we can imagine, we can see the pictures. We’ll be zooming at those pictures from beginning to end. Just choose one. The set said the most interesting stories.

Speaker Right. Well, I think for me, out of the three or four that we’ve done together, it’s got to be the one of Stephanie Seymour and market share Kinberg. It was this whole experience of taking this woman entirely gorgeous woman. OK. The Versace campaign that I think probably had the most impact. I mean, I don’t know about everybody, but to me had the most impact was when we did a campaign with Stephanie Seymour and this male model market share. Enberg, who was.

Speaker Yeah, I’ve been seeing it. Do you have a glass? I catch it.

Speaker OK.

Speaker OK, out of all the Versace ad campaigns that we’ve done together. The one that stands out the most to my eyes still. And that got a lot of attention was an ad campaign where he used Stephanie Seymour as the only model for the clothes and male model called Market Share Kinberg, who is basically nude the whole week. And it was just this so sort of incredible collaboration of reinventing Stephanie in terms of a model, a woman, an energy, you know, a clothing wearing, you know, image that was just I mean, here we are in the situation with a studio and this impossibly beautiful woman and these impossibly well-made clothes and not a thing is wrong. And there manages to be this sort of wild explosion going on between the two. It’s like this perfect marriage of physical perfection. But there was always something odd. I mean, with Dick, there’s always something in a picture that’s I don’t know the word in me. It’s just a little queer or a little Berent, you know, which the rest of the whole perfection of everything. There’ll be a foot that’s twisted in a way that’s just you can’t believe it’s supporting this woman or this explosion of clothing and movement and body. And this.

Speaker I don’t know. It’s just very it’s very amazing because you can see how hard.

Speaker Maybe it’s that you can’t you can’t see the real effort that went into this.

Speaker It just comes so spontaneous and so well, you know, this girl can, like, fly across the room.

Speaker And, you know, it’s just everybody worked so hard to please themselves because we’re all sharing this huge responsibility to this image. I mean, it’s like these girls are the most beautiful girls in the world.

Speaker I mean, you know, Stephanie works with a lot of other people, not just Dick, but you can see it in the pictures and you can see it in life. It’s just this willingness to give. And it’s not just a shoulder or hip or what a model is usually inclined to give. It’s to have this other excuse me, perfection and then go on.

Speaker And what comes out is something of herself. We look at these pictures. When I look at these pictures, I see something, Stephanie. And I’ve looked at a lot of pictures of Stephanie and see a real beautiful woman modeling clothes or modeling beauty. But when I look at takes pictures of her, I see Stephanie. And it’s not always about does my job look great over here, does don’t my eyes look crazy? It’s very intensive in terms of how. Much everyone’s willing to give to it. And I just see all of it in that campaign the most. I mean, this beautiful inspired. I know it’s really musical. It’s not something that I see or experience all the time when I’ve worked on pictures sometimes with other photographers. I just don’t want to look at them anymore. And I’ve worked with a lot of really excellent photographers. But time and time again, when I’ve learned something, when I feel like it’s fresh again, the way I’m seeing something. It’s invariably with Dick Abbadon.

Speaker We were looking at those pictures. What should what would be interesting for us to know about all the work that would involve the matter, pictures of go in there and just what did you want to do? Close about it, get together here? They did. And what were the difficulties? Absolutely. Listen, you think a pedestrian might be going? What had to happen?

Speaker What has to happen?

Speaker Right.

Speaker That campaign, if we laid it out flat in front of us and I was looking at it, I mean, I don’t really think any of its pedestrian because it’s a giant effort to keep all of the hard parts free and clear for Dick to just relate to this.

Speaker Composition is. It’s Tyrolean. It’s incredible. It’s you have to really think about.

Speaker The clothes have to be perfect, but that’s not what I have to spend my time thinking about. Yes, the coats got to go this way in this picture. And, you know, well, maybe there’s an outfit that’s to walk the dog in and neither one of us will think, OK, we’ve got to shoot that out, that we’re really psyched. I mean, there’s gonna be outfits you’re really stoked about shooting. Oh, they’re just beautiful. They’re just perfection. Then there’s something that’s it’s advertising. There’s something that’s really important to the client. And your soul is not in this picture, but you manage to put some art into it. And if there’s a girl standing here and her waist is impossibly tiny and she just looks so perfect and dull and boring, it’s just not good enough in that situation. It’s got to be, you know, emanating something more. Or if it’s not emanating, it’s got to be a vortex and it’s got to be pulling everything in. This phenomenon of working with.

Speaker Not just the space that’s occupied is, you know, one that’s really practiced by a lot of people that perfected by Dick Avidan sitting down.

Speaker Right. Right. Well, we were pulling stuff up a bit. Working 20 hour days. What is that you pull? Give us a sense. OK. You rush out. All right. Good idea.

Speaker Well, this campaign, all the clothes exist. So, as I said, it’s all about deciding what’s going to make a consistency. What’s it sitting there in a room full of clothes and thinking there is not something so special right there. What is gonna make that different? What is gonna make that special? And you sit there and it’s 12:00 at night and you don’t want to call Dick and you’re thinking, oh, well, you know, what about we take pantyhose and we ladder them. And then it progresses to a why are we going to put laddered tights on a girl in the seventeen thousand tother dress? Well, well, then maybe we just need something textural. Maybe we need something shape. And you start looking around in corners and you walk in attics and you see spider webs. And instead of thinking of cleaning the way you think of, I’ve got to have that on somebody’s legs. How amazing is that? And you do call it well at night. Where are you calling first thing in the morning? And you say, well, how do you feel about this and how do you feel about that? And if he loves it, he’s like, I don’t know, I have to see it. And he sounds like I’m going to love it. Am I going to love it? And I’ll ask you. And so you sit there stressing. Is he going to love it? Is he going to love it? And then you bring 15 examples of this and he see something and he takes it from there and then comes back to me with. Well, this could work, but wouldn’t this be more fabulous? So it’s this constant escalation of like, well, we could get rid of that and we could do this and we could bring this back together. But it’s always going to this singular vision that’s usually having nothing to do with fashion. And it’s always something that occurs to me is very abstract. I mean, it’s like fine can go look at Florentin, you know, Fresco’s we can go look at a million things in a book. And what it comes down to is like a simple thing.

Speaker A simple thing about imperfection. A simple thing about make this crooked, simple thing about if you’re what’s so interesting about a beautiful umbrella, unless it’s been in a storm, you know, I do weird stuff.

Speaker I break umbrellas. I put runs in pantyhose, like hide 15 yards of fabric that the designer designed just so you could see it just to make it strong for the picture.

Speaker And I mean, in a way, I used to feel it was very dishonest. It’s like, well, this doesn’t really fit like this and this doesn’t really happen. In fact, it does. I’ve just taken clothing and used it as my medium to do sculpture. It’s what a stylus does. The designer gives it to you. You enhance it and interpret it. It’s art for consumption. So I think basically we just interpret it and sort of put it back out there. And it started with advertising. You can’t go around showing things that aren’t available. You can’t go cutting apart dresses. I mean, all the time, you know. But with if a girl’s got to bend down and it’s for Dick Avedon, the dress doesn’t fit. You cut it in half off. You have to. But, you know, it’s it’s not. For the sake of you not always feeling like it’s for the sake of somebody having to buy this dress, it’s for someone wanting to be involved in this moment. And for me, it’s incredible because when I was 13 and 14 and I get Vogue and I see these Versace ads with these incredible groups of women and men suspended everywhere. This is pathetic. But I would cry because I had nothing to do with this picture. Nothing. And eight years later, I meet him. And then seven years later, it’s like wanted to Versace. I think I’m going to do it again. So it was this weird karma circle. But it’s amazing because I when I finally did meet Dick, it was like I had known already through his pictures. And I didn’t really think that was an assumption of me, because really does seem like he expresses who he is, very honestly. Through those pictures.

Speaker I at to Stephanie see what what is so special about her for him.

Speaker Stephanie Seymour is a really big, wild new push. I mean, it’s new to me. Two years old. I mean, he’s been shooting Stephanie longer than that. But something must have just clicked one day. I mean, because there’s this feeling between the both of them that you can see. I mean, you can sense it when they’re together. It’s like this very it’s love. They just love to be together. They love to do things together. I mean, I understand that from her, you know. It’s perfectly right, you know, to take everything you’ve got and it’s safe to let it go somewhere because there’s a channel for it. That is what is so incredible about Stephanie. She’s so incredibly visual. It’s her face, but she knows how to use it. I don’t know that many people, models included, who know what they look like. And Dick recognizes this or seems to as this incredible potential between. OK, Stephanie, if you’re ready to go ahead and give it all you’ve got. I’m ready to sit here and try to like channel that and we’ll get that on film. And they do. And Stephanie works her butt off. Stephanie works pregnant. Stephanie works nursing. I mean, Stephanie works. And she’s totally not obsessing about does my nose crooked, my eyes look like this. It’s like, do you think it’s beautiful? And when she says, do you think it’s beautiful? She’s not saying. Do I look beautiful in this picture? I think maybe we’re a model to really relate that deeply and sort of just sort of innately understand that you’re going for it and they’re going for it, too. And it becomes totally personal, but not physical. Is this visual collaboration, and I don’t think that Dick gets that from too many models. I think he gets a girl’s most beautiful face or a girl’s most beautiful attitude. But Stephanie, he gets the most real Stephanie. And that’s that’s a gift anybody gives you that you’re gonna be flawed. And I think Chief Lorden.

Speaker What do you think of the picture that is making an enormous amount of attention? I think a very small.

Speaker Oh, Ignacio of the dress, that was Polly’s picture, I think Paula indicated that picture together. And I love that picture. This picture where she’s wearing this come to garçon mesh body stocking and she’s just got it hiked up, this incredibly beautiful tensile hand right over her pubic hair. And she’s just I mean, she’s neither vapid nor defiant or anything. She’s just sitting standing there like this, Fawn. And it’s just so it’s sort of to me, I checked it like it’s objectified, that whole relationship that I discussed between them. Like, I’m gonna go for it. You’re going to go for it. There’s this trust that we’re both sitting here working on this image. But it’s just Stephanie allowing herself to be. And feel beautiful and to not feel pornographic about exposing her body. It’s just like, well, this is how far I’ve gone. I don’t know what’s in Stephanie’s head, but it’s gone far enough where she’s been this incredible, you know, improbable, imperfect in human sort of beauty goddess. And here’s her pubes. She’s human. You know, here she is, just like you and me and fearless about it, not concerned. I don’t really think the crotch was the major issue in the picture. When I look at that picture, when I saw it first. I was looking at her face.

Speaker It’s funny. I don’t know. I’m always looking at people’s eyes. I’m looking at her eyes. And then I see the rest of the picture. And to me, there is nothing jarring about it.

Speaker It just happened to be there the way she was standing and the dress you could see right through it already. And I don’t know, as a stylist, I’ve had to deal with, like, the lump of Bush before. So, I mean, what better way to do it than not hide it? What better way to do it than just sort of weave it?

Speaker There it’s like this is me. This is who I am. I thought for a fashion picture, which that was a fashion picture. It was a it was a portrait. It was a real portrait of Stephanie by Dick. Stephanie’s out there. I mean, I love her to bits. And when she’s working and she’s on a set, she is the most visually seductive person. She has got to absolutely have everyone in her thrall or she’s just not doing a good job. And everyone is when you’re working with her, you’re in her thrall. She is emanating this intense energy. I’m telling you, I’m not like a big moral fan. It’s not like I’m not a model fan, but usually you don’t have that kind of collaboration with the girl. I mean, I’ll be there. I’ll be fixing something or the other because it doesn’t look right to me back here next to Dick where the picture is being taken from. And a lot of the times you’ll have a girl knows how she looks federate. She’s going to, you know. And you can’t just get on with taking this picture. And Stephanie didn’t look twice. The whole situation, that working situation is everyone’s there, the respect it’s been allotted. We’re there to do what we’re there to do. And everyone is a component to this. And she trusts.

Speaker Oh.

Speaker OK. We recently did this portrait for The New Yorker of a girl named Chloe, and Chloe is an actress slash scene queen slash personality. I mean, I am recalcitrant to say downtown, but that’s where she haunts. I mean, she’s actually from Connecticut, believe the moment she’s living with her family in Connecticut. But she is more of a real girl of the moment than we’ve had on the scene in New York in a long time. The scene being this sort of like younger, coming up out of their homes, you know, newly independent, wanting to be highly visible, not necessarily cognizant of what they’re going to do. Club scene, daytime scene, hang out in Soho scene. And there’s this very interesting young writer who wrote a film this summer called Kids. And the whole premise of the film is about two guys who want to screw virgins, period. Chloes the lead in this film, and it’s called Kids and it’s directed by Larry Clark. So it’s promising to be some kind of radical, you know, kind of graphic film. I I’ve read the story, but Chloe got the lead and Jay MacInerney done this article on her in The New Yorker. And Dick had been in Milan and he had been in Cologne and he had been everywhere. And he came back and I guess Tina called him up and said, you know, why do this picture of this girl? This is the story with her. This is who she is. And I had met her. I mean, I’ve met her for about two years. I’ve met her on and off. And Dick, I’d never seen her except for some pictures that some people had sent him to the studio. And he was with all this background he’d been given in this article he read. He thought, oh, this can be this radical. You know, I’m not sure he knew what to expect. And then he got all these pictures of her and she was really normal looking girl. I mean, I’ve used that comparison like she’s sort of the Edie Sedgwick of today. And today it is you know, there aren’t that many like girls running around and all that kind of makeup. And, you know, she is a real girl who is real normal. She’s a normal girl who hangs out and the whole rave scene looks up to her. But she’s not out there in Rasor platform, high heels and, you know, pietà on her eyelids or anything. She’s very straightforward. She’s got this kind of like sleepy, almost lyric quality to her where she just. I don’t know. She’s she’s very fascinating. And Dick was sort of like, where are we going to go with this? What are we gonna do with this girl? I mean, these pictures they sent me, she just looks totally normal. And, you know, is she I mean, what’s going on? Tell me. I said, well, you know, she’s quirky and she’s funny and you’re gonna get it as soon as you see her, you’re gonna get it. Well, I saw one picture of her for German Vogue, and she had these fabulous black eyes on and it was Stewart with black eyes. So I’m like, well, I don’t know, Dick. She’s probably not going to go for it because she’s very convicted on what this image of her is. I’m a normal girl. I’m a real kid, you know, and the whole vibe right now downtown. And it’s everybody wants to be young. It’s the same old story. Everybody’s wearing still baby clothes and nobody’s like piling on the makeup. I mean, the models are real into the glam, but the real cutting edge scene downtown fancies itself pretty organic, sir. No, sir. Snowboarding and, you know, no major pretentious glamour fashion scene. But in a way, there is these are kids that sort of make their own clothes. And Chloe works at the store liquids guy. But anyway, Dick wanted to just sort of get the essence of this girl. Well, downtown. OK, well, queen of a scene that I don’t exactly understand. And I said, well, you know, the fact is, is that you do you do understand the scene. It’s just the new you thing of the moment. I mean, you’ve seen it over and over. You’ve been it. It’s the same thing now. And this girl is gonna be a breeze. She didn’t. The great part about it to me was she didn’t really know who Dick was. I mean, she kind of did because this whole radical scene, like Larry Clark, I don’t know how familiar you are, Larry Clark, but he hates Abbadon and she’s his friend. And so she was basically running around, like, thinking, I don’t like this guy’s work. And she’d never seen it before. The sitting she comes to my house. I’m like, Okay, Dick, it’s gonna come to my house. I told her to go home getting her I’m going out mode and play Barbie in front of the mirror and pick out six things that are all hers. I’m not going to put her in a thing that isn’t hers and tell her, Chloe, you go home, lock yourself in your room and try to be your most radical Chloe. There’s only one day in your life that Dick Abbadon is going to take your picture. Maybe. And this could be it. So you go home.

Speaker So she had gone home and she decided she was going to be really defiant. And I said to her, you know, because Dick said to me, oh, I just wanted to be outrageous. And so I called her up and I’m like, listen, you know, he’s really feeling something outrageous. And so she was like, well, I’m not really outrageous. So I was like, okay. But I did see you out the other night giving us Bianca Jagger, that studio. So and she was like, oh, the alcohol. So I was like, okay, fine. I saw you going to Sharon’s shirt with a teardrop on your eye, a fedora and some killer gangster pants. I mean, do you feel that expresses yourself visually if you do bring it, you know, if you are feeling like the most radical Chloë you can be, but it’s acceptable. You’d walk down the street like that and you’d be happy to look like that. Bring it bring it with you, because you don’t want to be looking like somebody else. You want me going in 50 million showroom’s and pulling you these clothes that you might wear. But they’re not really you. You haven’t worn them. They don’t have clothing in them yet. So she does. And she comes over and, you know, she brings an array of really normal looking things. And what I love about her is show where Dr. Sholes with like a Harlem hospital shift, that’s her spring look. I mean, she’s really fab that way. But she came and she was wearing a sleeveless t shirt that said New York on it and she was wearing this denim jacket and just regular jeans and sneakers.

Speaker And I’m thinking, God, you know, Dixie’s this is going to be normal. He’s there’s gonna be no picture. He’s gonna send her home. It’s gonna be ugly. Meanwhile, don’t ask me why I’m projecting this. It’s like never really been ugly that way.

Speaker You know, there’s always something that he can just shut down everything and look at what’s in front of him. So here I am heavily counting on this. And it comes to my house and I’m thinking, you know, it’s it’s a little cold, you know, to be bare legged. And so I give her these mad pantyhose that are from the 60s. They’re sort of like opaque to the knee. They’re like knee socks with pantyhose attached to them. And so she puts them on this fabulous kind of reddish burgundy color. And I have this skirt and this pin striped skirt. And she brings these really brilliant, cheesy little patent leather sling backs, old Capezio or something. And she wears those. And I’m like, okay, you look great. Do you feel like yourself? Do you feel like you can live with the picture you’re gonna look at maybe for a long time the way you look? She’s like, yeah.

Speaker So we’re sitting here and she’s getting ready.

Speaker And I said to her, well, you know, if you looked at. Pictures much, and she said, no, not really. So I gave her the autobiography to sit there and look at. I’m getting ready to leave and like, feeding the bunny, whatever, and looking through these pictures. And she’s like, mm hmm. I hear, like, a lot of sounds. We never really talk about the work. And she goes, there’s some pretty great pictures in there. She goes, he’s done a lot of stuff. And, you know, he knew. And I was like, Really? And I couldn’t think what she meant. I was like, like what? We get all carried away, really. We go, we get downtown. We get in the car with Dick. She meets and everything’s great. He’s like, wow, you know, now I see. I didn’t see your eyes in the pictures they sent me. I didn’t see that you were beautiful in the pictures that they sent me. You look great. So let’s go downtown and do this.

Speaker So you’d spent the whole day before the shooting scouting locations with his assistant, Steve. I mean, you know, he Dick is no slacker. It’s like he’s not just gonna take a picture to get it over with handed in to meet a deadline for nothing. I mean, if he was ever like that, I’d find it hard to believe. But he sure isn’t like that. So he found this place a lot of people, a lot of us know. And in a way, that’s what’s so brilliant about it. There’s this gas station on Second Street and Avenue B that has now become this stockpile of junk metal on top of junk metal. It’s just like motorcycles melted together with wheels and, you know, fake Ferris wheels and giraffes and this whole big, mad, insane sculpture. And I thought, oh, you know, it’s such a fixture of the Lower East Village. It’s like that’s such I’m a little worried about that. That’s gonna be really busy. And I’m thinking this and I’m saying this done. And he said, well, you know what? I just think it’ll be beautiful and lyric and we’ll just have to see how it looks. And if you don’t think that it looks right, we’ll go to another location. So we get there. And of course, he sticks this girl in the middle of this utter chaos and sets up the eight 10 on Avenue B with like junky’s.

Speaker Gonna give it to me, momma and Dick, not like freaking out or making assistance. Make anybody go away. You know, just when it comes time to work here, is this, like, total junkie going? Oh, yes. That’s the look we like instead of Dick like ignoring him, not acknowledging him. Nothing. The guy gets the same treatment we all get when it’s time to take the picture he gets.

Speaker And of course, the guy’s like nothing.

Speaker Of course he takes the picture. I’m sitting there, it’s eight, 10 sheets, so nothing’s numbered. And I’m looking at it and he’s like, come look through here. And I look through there and what do I see? I see this girl. I don’t see this pile of junk. I see this girl. I see this portrait of where it’s even been taken and thinking, you know, there he goes. That shoots my theory to hell. No, of course it looks beautiful.

Speaker There’s just this arc over her and she just looks wonderful and he takes the picture. And I counted the first one. She’s a little bit like old and second one in third, fourth and fifth frame. I’m just like, boom. And there was one point where we were both like, that’s beautiful. That was like the fifth sheet. And so he was like, I think it looks great. He’s like, do you think she should move around? I’m like, well, maybe we should put her this way over here. And he looks at it and we look at it and we’re like, no, you know, he got it. I mean, he got it with like, I don’t know how many sheets of film, probably not even ten. But, you know, he knows we got it. We get back in the car. New feeling like I said, Dick, fourth, fifth or sixth frame.

Speaker You got it. He’s like, well, it’s sheets. We’ll never know if you’re right, but I feel it was beautiful and we got it. And we’re sitting there and she’s in the car with us. We’re all getting ready to go our separate ways.

Speaker So she says to Dick, So you shot those C.K. ad? So then he said, C.K., she was like, yeah, Calvin Klein fragrance. You shot that right? And he said, yeah, I did obsession and I did eternity. And she said, no, the ones that are out now, he said, What do you mean? She said the print ads were C.K. won the fragrance. No idea what she was talking about. And the pictures are, of course, Steven mysel pictures. And of course, they’re incredibly, incredibly sort of reminiscent of his factory pictures. And I just loved it. It was just sort of this moment for me where it was this girl going. Oh, Steven Loiselle took those pictures after I told her Steven took him and she was like, tricked you off.

Speaker It was kind of great pictures, really didn’t say anything, but he giggled. For me, it was a real moment because I’m just thinking about looking through the book and seeing those pictures and thinking, oh, so you didn’t do those, but you did that first. And her saying, gee, I guess I really like yours. It was really interesting to me.

Speaker Sort of move in different directions. You brought up the question of one of my background. Talk about.

Speaker That’s right. This whole scene is different for him and his wife.

Speaker Right. Well, with this picture, with Chloe and I thought, OK, I’m going to get this girl up to the studio and he’s going to look at her and he’s going to love her and he’s going to say, why can’t we just shoot it in the white background? So he doesn’t say this. So I said, well, you know, Dick, I kind of thought you were just gonna sit here and think, why don’t we?

Speaker You know, I said, why are you going to do a white background? And he said, I’m bored doing so much white background right now. And it just, you know, there’s I could do more for her than this. You know, this is I just I want to go outside. I want to do this outside. I think it’ll be right. And if we don’t feel like we got it, we’ll come back here and do something in the studio later. But let’s try this way.

Speaker And this is really what it’s about. With Dick, it’s like, let’s go on an adventure. Things happen on an adventure. And I really think that was the whole basis of it. I mean, that beautiful picture he did in Dublin on the street. I mean, he has been just really like the more he goes out and does things like I had helped to trunk style shooting, which means basically you don’t go with the photographer on the trip, but you put together this whole trunk of things. And it’s funny because I think the whole point that I never really brought up about the Versace is something that is really important, and that is this relationship that used to exist between models and photographers where there wasn’t I didn’t exist. I mean, stylists weren’t there. You know, models did their own makeup. They did their own hair. I mean, in the 60s, things really started to change. But stylists were to society, ladies, dressing up society ladies. And that’s not how it is anymore.

Speaker But with this feeling of this one on one, it’s just me. In relation to what? Happens when you do go out.

Speaker It’s different. You have less connection to everything else. I think maybe you really have to look more. Not a white background. I mean, it’s just another sort of like to freshen your eye and, you know, I don’t know about him, but I think for me it was like eating parsley after pizza. You know, it’s just very. Let’s just go out and take this picture. I mean, for me, one of the sexiest pictures ever, ever taken. It’s a portrait of W.H. Auden on St. Mark’s Place. And, you know, I showed off shot of these pictures to Chloe and thought, you know, this is a sexy picture. What do you think? You know, do you think this is a sexy picture?

Speaker And she said, well, I want to sleep with them.

Speaker So, no, it’s not all, you know. I mean, do you think this does this picture make you want to look at it?

Speaker And she goes, yeah, it does make me want to look at it. And I think that for Dick, he’s gonna want to look at it, too, just because he made it. You know, I mean, I have a treat looking through pictures that he’s taken with him. I mean, there was this I was convinced when I met him there was gonna be this boredom and this jadedness and this. Oh, I’ve seen it done it been it had it you know, there’s no such thing as that. And if something’s been done, like in terms of this location that we did with Chloe, I felt like saying my first heard this, my first instinct was to say, that’s our tired every hip hop video production crew has shot there. It’s been. And then I thought, well, he’s never shot there, so why kill it?

Speaker And I’ve never seen it look so appropriate before. I don’t know if that answers your question at all.

Speaker How is Polly Mellon now? I mean, it’s interesting because to me, Polly Mellon has long represented somebody who has no fear. A lot of people want to, you know, giggle about the way Polly will stand up in the middle of a show and start clapping hysterically in the midst of silence. But you know what? Hurray for her, because she has really taken designer’s clothes. I mean, Polly is a really clean stylist. It’s not like she can’t do accessories, but she does concept a whole lot better to me. She takes clothes and she takes them clean. She combines them clean. But she combines that. She combines them in this way. That’s really daring. I mean, she likes to pull and stretch and, you know, just take this thing to where it can go on its own. It isn’t a Kaleen surface like scene. It isn’t about would not just be incredible if we got some glasses on it. She seems to be the kind of stylist to me that pulls something because it’s great not pulls something. She’s gonna make it great, but she can take it and illustrate what’s great about it in pictures. So, yeah, she’s been like a longstanding, you know, source of admiration for me. I think she’s ruling. I came in to styling, having a definite role model, a definite heroine. A woman I’d never met. It was the same situation that I had with Dick, and her name was Julie. Julie introduced me to Dick. And it’s just this school of stylists who are fearless, their editors. I mean, call Polly a stylist is right. But it’s really important to point out that she is an editor in the truest sense of the word. She will look at a collection and she will see what’s great about it. And not just photographic, but tangible, wearable, you know, connect, you know, connectable to her. I don’t know what you’d call interviewers. I mean, mismo and I mean, I can’t even really call her Polly all the times that we’ve met.

Speaker I have been running up some crowded stairway at some fashion venue and everybody wants to get the hell out of cause it’s over and there’s five hundred of you and it’s a fire trap or whatever.

Speaker But I mean, really, before models started getting hip, before Ed started getting hip, before, you know, people in fashion started getting hip. There was Polly Mellon and her Perfecta leather jacket. You know, there she was walking up some kind of graded stairway at some downtown show and treating it as important to get there as YSL, as important to get there as anything. And looking at this show, not like I’m the great Polly Mellon and I’ve come to your show. Don’t forget me. Never the Polly Mellon looking for favors. Never the Polly Mellon looking for free clothes. Always Polly men. Mellon seeking out something to put out there for people to see and be inspired by and not always the most impossibly expensive or the most impossibly cheap. Always something for everybody and always done in a really appealing way. I mean, there isn’t anybody like Polly Millen. She is Miss Colorful. She is, you know, totally young and just in all the best senses of the word. She’s young in that way. We’re like, oh, there’s always the chance for something to be fresh. There is never, you know, no hope. She’s one of the people who I feel like I’m in company with the people that are trying to keep fashion alive because it’s sort of waning a little bit. It needs some air. You know, we had probably 16 seasons, at least eight years of black leggings. And then before it was, you know, too old, we had flares again. And just to be able to have that consistent energy level and not be bored and dig through all this stuff like it’s the bottom of a really nasty closet and come up with something that’s fresh and wonderful and appealing is her real talent.

Speaker You’ve discovered Denyse. I’ve certainly seen it reported on camera in many different guises. You describe and I’ve seen it as a runaway truck. Exactly. Things seem to be going really well.

Speaker OK, well, tough and exacting. I mean, I don’t even know if I have to get specific on the situation, but there are always moments on a sitting when it’s tough and exacting because we’re relying on an energy level here and to get a bunch of people at least partially running on the same energy level at the same time to get what you know, to get us to all want the same thing. You know, that’s really the things I’d like. Let’s all get the same thing. It’s like let’s all want the same thing. So there’s the possibility of it happening. It transpiring. And yeah, I mean, Dick can be so impossible. But at the moment, you’re not thinking it’s worth it. It’s worth it at the moment. You’re thinking, oh God, what am I going to do? He hates it. You know, I’m not going to work here again because he’s never going to call me again. You know, you’re just like manic, but it’s so incredible. It goes right back to that tension. It’s just like it’s relied upon to bring you to where you have to go. It’s like, you know, if I have to have five assistance to get something, I’ll get them. It’s just that it’s not desperation. It’s this sort of renal thing where it’s like, OK, we got to get this thing done. And I mean, Dick will be in the middle of doing a picture and somebody will walk in talking or some assistant who’s never worked with Dick before or, you know, somebody who’s just like Stan, you’re going fierce. It looks so great, you know, blah, blah, blah. And he will not turn around. He will say, I don’t care who you are. Shut up and get out.