PURPLE MAGAZINE CELEBRATES 25 YEARS AT THE FOREFRONT

For 25 years Purple Magazine has been connecting art and fashion and still today remains a pillar of contemporary fashion. Marking this special milestone is an anniversary issue of 25 different covers, including amateur erotic photographer John Kayser, that celebrate the artists and models who incarnated the spirit of the magazine through their style, attitude, and personality. They include Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, Paul McCarthy, Michèle Lamy, Susan Cianciolo, Stella and Eva, Amanda Wall, Maurizio Cattelan, Paul Hameline and many more. In a tribute to modeling as a form of art with muses who truly inspire designers, photographers, stylists and editors, each cover girl tells a quarter century story. They include supermodels Eva Herzigova and Stella Tennant; Nineties icons like Guinevere, Alek Wek, and Chloë Sevigny; the faces of the new millennium such as Jamie Bochert, Saskia de Brauw, and Anja Rubik; new-generation talents including Tamy Glauser, Anna Cleveland, Rila Fukushima and Sky Ferreira; plus, emerging supermodels Slick Woods, Kiki Willems and Grace Hartzel. Founded in 1992 by Olivier Zahm, still editor-in-chief, and Elein Fleiss, Purple emerged as a fashion reaction known as “anti-fashion” or “grunge” that countered the late-Eighties power dressing and in-your-face glamour. With it came a wave of new girls, new faces and new ways of posing in front of camera. In other words, more freedom, spontaneity and open sexuality. According to the magazine in an online preface, still today models are artists in their own right who create a legitimate bond between an attitude and the clothes. Through an intuitive communication with a photographer, the model is the co-creator of a picture. The art of modeling is not about simply looking good in front of a camera, finding the best profile and attitude, having fun and looking sexy. Enough of that is on Instagram. There is no school for modeling, no repertoire of poses. A good model is someone who instinctively reinvents modeling from A to Z. In that light, Purple makes it clear how it has always preferred models who are “real” psychologically and emotionally, encouraging them to be who they are and to engage with the camera, dressed or not, and to do so without falling into conventions. Another way to break the rules is to revisit modeling in intimate ways, such as having the model shot by a lover. Very effective.