Cinema Verite by Steven Meisel

Fashion and fantasy often come hand in hand. For example, the beautiful editorials styled by Grace Coddington are always set in a sense of intrigue and beauty or how about the eccentric Chanel shows as conjured up by Karl Lagerfeld? You don't get more fantastical than an underwater kingdom catwalk or how about a rotating carousel. 

I love fantasy, and agree with the great Grace Coddington, that there's nothing better than getting immersed in a beautiful, well edited  photo-shoot. Steven Meisel is one of the greatest photographers ever and his shoots for Vogue Italia always tell a story; a powerful narrative which leaves you revisiting and reinterpreting his work time and again. For the October 2002 issue of Vogue Italia, Meisel shot an amazing editorial titled 'Cinema Verite.' With late 90s supermodels Carmen Kass, Carolyn Murphy, Karolina Kurkova and Amber Valletta this magical shoots converts fashion into a film set very realistically. We are transported to the wild west with Kurkova posing jaggedly alongside cowboys, then its over to 1920s New York filled with mobster car chases and mafia gang war fare. Over to Ancient Greece (which is in fact the photo which first drew my attention) where the supers stand as tall, majestic goddesses and then how about a snow storm in the middle of Antarctica?

Film stars as a huge inspiration for this truly sublime shoot, which really must have taken ages to shoot by Meisel's magical lens. Fashion is merely used as a prop to tell a story and that's what I truly admire about the power of magazines and photo-shoots in general. Take a look for yourself and enter a world of cinematic fantasy...