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.

Pirate of the Kate-ibbean.

I have just discovered this photograph of Kate Moss and Johnny Depp by Francois-Marie Banier. They were a beautiful couple weren't they. I love it.
Kate and Johnny met in January 1994 in Cafe Tabac (New York), stayed in a hotel together in February when there was a snow storm, rented a house at Christmas in Aspen and walked through the streets hand in hand, but the best bit is Kate's surprise 21st birthday party in 1995:
"Johnny said, 'We're going to dinner' - he's like, 'Put a dress on' and I'm like, 'I haven't got a dress'. So I had on this satin dress down to the floor, and he got the scissors and he's, like, cutting it up to the knee, literally, while we're walking out the door. I'm wearing, like, red satin up to the knee, all jagged."
They were together for four years, but then split because apparently Johnny was impossible to live with. In 2005 an article in the Daily Star quoted him as saying "I don't think I was very good for her"... probably not a good idea then that she met Pete Doherty ten years later?