Obsessed By You.

Mario Testino is older than both my parents and has been in intimate contact with Kate Moss, Lady Diana and Gisele Bundchen. And I don't mean to say he's a sordid older gentleman, I actually mean that he's a rather popular fashion photographer.Born in Peru and currently in the likes of Vogue and Vanity Fair, Testino has seen it all. Call me fashionably uneducated but I've only recently discovered him, and it seems he's somewhat in the league of an 'icon'. His exhibition posters and book covers are divinely risqué, with lavish and implicated scenarios - for example, his cover for 'Let Me In' displays Demi Moore seductively applying lipstick to the lips of her toy-boy lover Ashton Kutcher. Hell, he even managed to defrost Vogue editor and renowned ice queen Anna Wintour into a remotely bemused semi-grin, simply with a click of his camera. It seems I have cultivated a newly acquired penchant for this chic Super Mario.




I can't quite put my finger on it, but this man provides the human eye with something akin to ecstasy; his images draw you into a world you always wanted to see but never knew how to. His photographs tell a thorough story without actually showing much context, his subjects look as comfortable naked as if they were in pyjamas, I don't even know what his face looks like. There is the oxymoronic idea of a lavish carnival teamed with slick simplicity at work here.








And if that doesn't convince you of his talents, I'm sure you've seen the classy recent ad campaign for D&G fragrance, featuring Claudia Schiffer and Naomi Campbell proving that they still got it...

Effortless.