15. Russian Glamour, June 2009
Beyoncé's skin looked digitally darkened on the cover of Russian Glamour — and the editors had a guide! A magazine called Joy used the same shot in December 2007. Was something lost in translation? Save your "black Russian" jokes until the end.

14. L'Oreal, August 2008
Beyoncé's skin seemed very light in ads for Feria haircolor. One theory: she was washed out by the strong lighting usually used in shooting hair.

13. Vogue, November 2009
The cast of Nine is chock-full of gorgeous women, but this shot is a mindscramble of random rays of sunlight in hair and dresses with edges so sharp they look like they're for paper dolls. As I wrote in October: "I'm guessing [Annie] Leibovitz shot them each separately and then did a composite, but when you have a person who doesn't cast a shadow on the lady next to her, then that person is a vampire." Poor Kate Hudson looks like she was slapped on as an afterthought.

12. Complex, April/May 2009
Kim Kardashian's waist was cinched, her thighs were slimmed, her skin skin smoothed out and her hairline was cleaned up. Plus, her head appears to be a different shape in the "after" image. Who would have thought a skull could be made "sexier"?

11. Self, September 2009
Kelly Clarkson's "Total Body Confidence" came from digitally slimming her waist and behind. Two Self editors explained that the cover: "is not, as in a news photograph, journalism. It is, however, meant to inspire women to want to be their best."

10. King Arthur poster, 2004
Movie marketers felt they must, they must, they must increase the bust. Ironically, Keira Knightley told the Guardian that she lost her chest, doing archery and preparing for the role:

To fight, convincingly, shoulder to shoulder, she had to do that thing that is so de rigueur, which is totally to change your body shape. "I was about three times the size I am now. It worried me, but it was cool, it was a body that was doing what it should do. I haven't got a clue because I don't weigh myself, but it was all muscle and I was big. My neck disappeared. My chest flattened even more. It wasn't the most feminine thing in the world, but it worked for the part, because there was strength there, and it was needed."

Of course, Hollywood can't imagine a world in which people would see a movie starring an athletic, flat-chested woman. So a digital boob job followed.

9. Redbook, July 2007
The crazy thing about the Faith Hill Redbook cover is not that it was Photoshopped — it's that this is the standard amount of digital altering that goes into a cover. Unlike some true Photoshop disasters, there are no alarming mistakes here to tip you off. That makes it easy to accept the retouched image without even blinking. Faith Hill is a beautiful woman. But she needed 11 different kinds of alterations before she could be on the cover of Redbook. What a world.

8. Campari calendar, 2008
Jessica Alba: Just another woman whose real body wasn't good enough. In this case, her waist needed to be nipped in so she could shill liquor.

7. Vogue, May 2008
RoboGwyneth looks like a robot, or an alien, depending on whom you ask. One thing is for sure: Her head and neck are not in the same space-time continuum.

6. Redbook, June 2003
Jennifer Aniston's head was placed on to Jennifer Aniston's body — from another photo shoot. At the time, her publicist, Steven Huvane, said: "It's a combination of three pictures. If you're going to do it, then at least match her head up to her body, and make the neck look like it belongs to her. I still can't figure out which exact picture the face came from." A Redbook spokeswoman downplayed the changes: "The only things that were altered in the cover photo were the color of her shirt and the length of her hair, very slightly, in order to reflect her current length."

The neck does look alarmingly unreal, and her head and waist are out of sync somehow. Angelina is surely to blame.

5.Redbook, July 2003
The month after the Aniston debacle, Redbook was at it again: According to USA Today, "[Julia's] head comes from a paparazzi shot taken at the 2002 People's Choice awards. Her body, meanwhile, is from the Notting Hill movie premiere [in 1999]." Julia's publicist, Marcy Engelman, said, at the time: "It's a shame they didn't use the body that went with the head, because it was a great Giorgio Armani pantsuit (that she wore to the People's Choice awards)."

4. Newsweek, March 2005
The editors used Martha's head and a model's body, because Ms. Stewart was still in jail when the issue was being put together. It wasn't supposed to be a photograph, anyway, it was art: "The piece that we commissioned was intended to show Martha as she would be, not necessarily as she is,'' Lynn Staley, assistant managing editor at Newsweek, told The New York Times. Staley acknowledged that the cover carried a disclaimer: ''In this case, we identified this piece as a photo illustration." As Martha would say, it's a "good thing" you did.

3. Seventeen, May 2003
Think about all the Buffy plots which could have been orchestrated around Sarah Michelle Gellar's weird wrist appendage over there on the left, if her arm actually looked like that.

2. GQ, February 2003.
Some people saw Titanic over and over again — but they never saw those legs, on the left. Kate Winslet was pissed about being trimmed down on this cover, saying:

"The retouching is excessive. I do not look like that and more importantly I don't desire to look like that. I actually have a Polaroid that the photographer gave me on the day of the shoot… I can tell you they've reduced the size of my legs by about a third. For my money it looks pretty good the way it was taken."

1. Ralph Lauren Blue Label ad, October 2009
In which model Filippa Hamilton was turned into a string of spaghetti.

• Rachel McAdams — with a mop of, dare we say it, could that be Kate G.-inspired hair — graces the January cover of Vogue. McAdams went to a couple fashion shows with Anna Wintour in September. [JustJared]

• John Galliano is getting into the men's wear business. Not satisfied with Christian Dior, Dior Haute Couture, John Galliano, and Galliano, the British designer will present his first men's collection at men's wear week in Milan next month. There will be knitwear, leather, shirts, jackets, and jeans, and the pieces be available for sale in the fall. [FWD]
• Sienna Miller was asked whether she was a fan of the January issue of V, which will feature plus-size models. "I suppose that's something you'd have to say — I couldn't sit here and say, 'No, I'm not,'" said the actress, who modeled briefly before switching codes. "But I sincerely believe that that's more beautiful than someone who is poker-thin. I really do. I would love to have boobs to go with my hips, but I don't — that's just not the way the cookie crumbled." [The Cut]
• An LVMH executive tweeted today that Marc Jacobs and Victoria Beckham were talking together about a line with fur. [Fashionologie]
• Britney Spears' upcoming Candie's campaign was shot this week by none other than Annie Leibovitz. That woman must be a total spendthrift to be bankrupt. [ONTD]
• Alberta Ferretti, who normally shows her Philosophy di Alberta Ferretti collection at New York Fashion Week, is downsizing, probably to a presentation, for this February. Ferretti herself may not even make the trip from Milan. [FWD]
• In case any of you were wondering: Those new Louis Vuitton ads that look kind of like low-rent Vermeers, and feature models doing leather work by hand with waxed linen thread? They are as fake as the pebble-finish coated canvas on a monogram bag. Louis Vuitton products are mass manufactured out of machine-cut pattern pieces by people at industrial sewing machines who do piecework. (Next up we plan to exclusively reveal that some of the cheese you eat may not, in fact, come from happy cows.) [BW]
• Barneys New York's parent company, Dubai World, received a $10 billion loan from Abu Dhabi to solve a cash flow emergency. This is fueling speculation that Barneys may be sold, although insiders say no sale is imminent. [WWD]
• More Michael Jackson memorabilia is hitting the auction circuit. Shoes which Michael Jackson moonwalked in for a concert on September 10, 2001, are being sold off along with a fedora from the same gig. [Mirror]
• After leaving fashion, Georges Marciano of Guess? jeans fame engaged in a kind of epic crack-up. He once dreamed of becoming governor of California, but his own paranoia, and a series of lawsuits, have him poised to lose a $500 million empire. [LATimes]
• Some people with too much time on their hands scoured The Fashion Spot, counting editorial models in the various world editions of Vogue for 2009. 17-year-old Karlie Kloss, reigning favorite of American Vogue and Vogue Italia, won; Carine Roitfeld's model of choice, Lara Stone, came in second. Jourdan Dunn, who spent nine months of this year pregnant, still managed to come in ninth. [Fashin]
• Nylon managed to say some nice things about the Olsen twins' JC Penney line, Olsenboye. Despite the fact that one of the pieces is a direct knock-off of Stephen Sprouse's graffiti pieces for Louis Vuitton. [Nylon]
• Same-store sales at H&M fell 9% on last year this November, marking the seventh straight month of falling comparable sales at the Swedish chain. [WSJ]
• Executives from Kohl's came to New York last week to look for real estate for what would be the company's first Manhattan location. Then New Yorkers could shop Lauren Conrad's collection in person! [WWD]

In an interview with BlackBook, Lois's basic beef is that magazines are trying too hard to make their inside pages look like the Internet, and that editors refuse to take chances on "ideas" covers, like the ones he was famous for at Esquire. And he has a point: As magazine's audiences inevitably become smaller with shrinking newsstand and hard-to-sustain subscription models, now is the time to take chances. Doubling down on what print can do with its visual real estate is a start.

We were curious, though, about how and how much Vogue has changed since Liberman's heyday — he oversaw Vogue's look from the early 40s to the early 60s, and then was editorial director of Conde Nast from 1962 to 1994. It is indeed hard to imagine Vogue doing something like this again (from March 1944, with a somber tone befitting wartime, and a Red Cross shoutout):

Or this famous exercise in restraint:

It seems unfair to compare an era of illustration to a photo-obsessed age, so we dipped into the 1960s. It's fair to say that this Irving Penn pop art cover from 1965 is a far cry from what Vogue does today:

But actually, at least when it comes to covers, you could argue that Vogue has often stayed true to form.

The blonde gamine:

The fresh-faced blonde:

The blonde with interesting choice of headgear:

The "I Have No Fucking Clue What This Is Supposed to Be":

Legacy: Protected.

Legendary Magazine Designer George Lois's Last Round [BlackBook]
Related: Vintage Fashion Magazines
Vogue Archives [On Sugar]

You know the score here already: this is one of Grace Coddington's patented fairytale shoots, wherein familiar stories from childhood are re-enacted by teenage models in $15,000 outfits for the amusement of all. Sometimes these spreads have an enforced sweetness, like saccharin; always they make one wonder just what Bruno Bettelheim would have to say about a publication made by and for adult women finding so much material in sanitized re-tellings of Grimm, with 4" Fendi heels.

But this one hits all the right notes. Actor Andrew Garfield, as Hansel, is the perfect foil to Lily Cole's Gretel; the sumptuous costumes (look at those tree men!) come courtesy of the Metropolitan Opera, where Richard Jones' production of Hansel und Gretel takes the stage next month. (Let's hope it will be better than Tosca.) But only Coddington's styling could rise to such extraordinary surroundings.

And after Hansel and Gretel fall asleep in the forest...

...the wicked witch appears! In the form of Lady Gaga.

Coddington reports Gaga turned up at the shoot "stark naked except for her white rubber raincoat and some very, very high heels!"

Did Vogue just do something...edgy?

Naturally, Gaga's plan to fatten up the wily siblings fails. "Gaga was so bubbly and chatty and enthusiastic and excited to be alive," raves Coddington. Too bad she ends up in the oven, dead.

So the little ones who were made into gingerbread come back to life, here portrayed by Grace Church's Junior Choristers.

So there are quibbles anyone could make with this shoot. Annie Leibovitz, with the sense of treacly ponderousness she brings to every shot, wasn't the most exciting choice of photographer; one imagines what someone of Tim Walker's or Paolo Roversi's aesthetic sensibility could have done with this kind of material. And in a few too many shots, Lily Cole is caught in fake-looking poses; there's no intentionality, not even any tone to her arm, when she is supposed to be holding shut the oven door for dear life. Instead, she looks like she's sort of blankly resting against it. But casting Lady Gaga as a wicked witch was inspired. Whoever did that deserves a promotion.

Lady Gaga Joins Lily Cole And Andrew Garfield In A Recreation Of Hansel & Gretel [Style.com]

Miller, famous for her work for Victoria's Secret, apes classic cheesecake poses in the campaign. The ads — or, excuse me, the "Salute From the Home Front to Those Who Defend Freedom" — are slated to run all month. (In fact, in a neat bit of corporate-branded patriotism, Harley-Davidson has re-named November "Military Appreciation Month." Traditional festivities apparently include ogling half-naked models in uncomfortable poses.) But is it just us, or is there something a little bit off about the appearance Miller's waist in the picture of her in profile, on the far right of the YouTube homepage banner?

As a tipster put it, maybe Photoshop is supposed to be patriotic now? Perhaps we should be thankful the retoucher at least left her whole hip intact.

In still images from the campaign, Miller's waist looks to have been similarly whittled. In fact, her head looks as wide as her rib cage.

Which is funny, because in the attached campaign video, we see footage of Miller posing for what seems to be the very same picture — she is saluting, wearing the same shoes, hairstyle and cap, and a similar outfit. (Clothes can easily be changed in post-production programs like Photoshop; it wouldn't surprise me if the belted beige leotard Miller wears in the final version of the picture was drawn on.)

And, again in the video, the camera even zooms in for a second on that unretouched image on the monitor at the shoot.

Funny, Miller really looks much better in these than she does in the over-processed end result.

Images like these, or Annie Leibovitz's photomontages, or the recent Ralph Lauren ads that have caused so much consternation, immediately jump out at the viewer because they ring false. We've seen bodies before: we all know nobody is built like that. The people responsible for the images know they're unreal. We know they're unreal. So why do marketers continue to assume we will buy products associated with pictures we fully recognize to be false?

We imagine female members of the armed services would be among the many upon whom the charm of such a campaign is lost.

YouTube [Official Site]
Harley-Davidson Military Appreciation [Official Site]
Marisa Miller & H-D Salute Those Who Defend Freedom [YouTube]

Earlier:
Ralph Lauren's Ridiculous Photoshop, More Ridiculous Rage
Ralph Lauren Fires Photoshopped Model For Being Too "Fat"
Ralph Lauren Fires
Yet Another Ralph Lauren Photoshop Of Horrors
Vogue's November Cover: Photoshop Of Horrors
ANTM: The Importance Of "Barbie Toe"
The Curious Case Of Demi Moore's Left Hip

I guess when you have a posse of gorgeous, iconic ladies — Nine's Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz and Kate Hudson — you feel obliged to make them look as good as possible. But for the love of natural lighting: Why so much Photoshop?

Sassybella asks, "Did Annie Leibovitz or Vogue go a little airbrush crazy?" The answer is a resounding YES. I can't wait to see this cover in person, to try and figure out what how someone cobbled these women into an image. I'm guessing Leibovitz shot them each separately and then did a composite, but when you have a person who doesn't cast a shadow on the lady next to her, then that person is a vampire.

Leibovitz makes composite images quite often; take this photograph of Judi Dench and Helen Mirren, for instance:

Blogger Jeffrey Saddoris has read Leibovitz's book, At Work, in which she writes:

"The picture of Hellen Mirren and Judi Dench in the car was made in two different places. It was fun directing Judi Dench to act like she was talking to someone who wasn't actually there. She was saying, 'You bitch. How could you have done this to me? Why did you do that to me?' And she had that look. If we had been using film, we would have to stitch two frames together, but since we were shooting digitally, we built the final picture in the computer."

On another forum, a poster dissects the Leibovitz Mad Men shoot:

The commenter writes:

It appears that Annie shot the scene in separate composites. She took a shot of January Jones from where she is standing in the video still, THEN after she got what she wanted she moved to the left and shot Jon Hamm exactly positioned and lit how she wanted. Then I would assume she stood back and took some overall shots of the room that would later be stitched together to form the overall piece.

NOW, from an overall look the photograph appears classy and fit to the time piece and most people would walk away from it without any negativity, and I still think its a great shot... but the perspective now just bothers me. It appears as though she isn't even looking directly at him. Her overall size appears smaller than him. Also, if you look near his ass the straight line that runs on the wall... isn't so straight, its very apparent that was a poor clone job.

Even though the cover is a nightmare, there's a gorgeous shot of the ladies on the inside:

Instead of looking like a hallucinatory vision or Hollywood interpretation of the "Footprints" poem, this actually looks like a photograph of women, sitting on a couch — next to each other and existing in the same time-space continuum. What a concept.

Prima Time [Vogue]
Yay Or Nay? Annie Leibovitz Over Airbrushes Another US Vogue Cover [Sassybella]
Photo139 – Week 2 [Saddoris]
Annie Leibovitz thread [Nature Forum]

Earlier: Nine Throws Down The Oscar Gauntlet
Other Ladies Agree: Annie Leibovitz's Latest Is Painfully Lame
Photo Finish: (Annie Leibovitz & People Of Color)

• Two weeks after adding Nicolas Cage's home to his sheaf of L.A. properties, Ed Hardy designer Christian Audigier has announced he's moving into Michael Jackson's last residence. Audigier will rent the $38 million home from his C.E.O., Hubert Guez. [E!]

• The glove the late King of Pop wore to marry Debbie Rowe has sold at auction for $49,000. [TMZ]
• "I love Japan. I love the people, the shopping, the fashion. I think they have so much fun with fashion...they don't take it too seriously," says Nicky Hilton. Don't take fashion seriously? Because insanely awesome and carefully cultivated street fashion just happens. [WWD]
  
• Mad Men's Christina Hendricks tells InStyle Weddings about her planned wedding to actor Geoffrey Arend, and specifies the designer (Carolina Herrera) and the look (Sophia Loren) of her wedding dress, but doesn't let it be photographed. [People]
• Lily Cole is a model, who is also (very) smart. The Daily Mail took a break from publishing finger-wagging paparazzi photos of her and scurrilous scuttlebutt about her to notice these facts. [Daily Mail]
• Nanette Lepore would like you to remember Labor Day by saving New York's Garment District from rapacious commercial exploitation. [NYTimes]
• Juicy Couture co-founder Gela Nash-Taylor doesn't drink out of common Starbucks cups. She has her own paper cups, because "I'm so into monogramming. I'm doing it on everything right now." [ToL]
• More than 800 stores across all five boroughs are involved in Thursday's shopping-with-fun event, Fashion's Night Out in New York City. Other regional and international events are also planned. [BrandWeek]
• Karl Lagerfeld will be tending the Chanel store with Carine Roitfeld in Paris, for example. [WWD]
• R.J. Cutler's documentary, The September Issue took in more than a quarter of a million dollars over Labor Day weekend. The $40,000 per-screen average makes it the fifth-highest-grossing documentary ever made. [AdAge]
• Meanwhile, Studio 360's Kurt Anderson says that based on the film, the fashion world is "amazingly old-fashioned, like some royal artifact from the 18th Century." [Studio360]
• The Los Angeles Times says the film "charts the intersection of art and commerce with a perhaps inadvertent eye for an excess that wasn't to last." (I am quoted in this article, proving that if you write long enough and, well, long enough on the Internet, someday someone will mistake you for an expert in something.) [LATimes]
• Anna Wintour, for her part, says that complaining about the sea change in the fashion industry that has taken place since the filming of that documentary is "like talking about that house you could've bought for nothing on the beach in Southhampton. Forget it. It's gone. The amazing golden years that everyone in the industry was enjoying were fantastic from a business point of view but also maybe a little unseemly. Every celebrity thought she could be a designer, and how many handbags? How many shoes? How much of a thing does everyone really need?" Then Wintour goes to the Macy's in Queens where she will be — on Mayor Bloomberg's orders that the event not smack of elitism — kicking off Fashion's Night Out, and upon surveying the scene, asks in a horrified voice, "Can we...enhance?" [NYMag]
• Sixteen months of declining same-store sales at the department store chain might make the budget for those "enhancements" leaner, however. [BW]
• And retailers in general, after an apocalyptic fall and winter, and a barely-improved spring and summer, are hungry for the fall sales boost that events like Fashion's Night Out are aiming to provide. [WWD]
• WWD has a beautiful, subscription-only, series of photographs of various New York designers as they prepare for fashion week. Alex Wang looks radiant and un-stressed, but the same can't be said of the male models snapped lining up for a casting at Yigal Azrouël. [WWD]
• Naomi Campbell would like to point out, for all those who called her hypocritical for modeling fur in Dennis Basso's fall campaign, that she actually quit PETA years ago. So her hypocrisy has weathered a few seasons now — like a vintage mink. [SB]
• More bad news for Annie Leibovitz: the practically-bankrupt photographer is being sued by an Italian photographer, Paolo Pizzetti, who claims that Leibovitz used his pictures without consent — or payment — for a Lavazza coffee campaign. Since Leibovitz could not travel to Italy to complete the shoot, which features images of models in romantic poses in front of Italian landmarks like the Trevi fountain and the Piazza San Marco, she had Pizzetti scout locations and take snapshots for her. Then Leibovitz shot the models in a New York studio, and digitally stitched the fore- and backgrounds together. Pizzetti says he was never paid for the rights to his contributions. [AW]
• Lady Gaga is reportedly set to perform during New York Fashion Week at an after-party for Givenchy hosted by Out magazine and to be held at The Box. [WWD]
• On the night of the 13th in New York, a short teaser film for Spring '10 by Gareth Pugh will be screened at Milk studios' M.A.C.-sponsored fashion shows in Chelsea. Although the first screening will be invitation-only, the second is open to members of the public who register on M.A.C.'s Facebook page. [Style.com]
• And newly-minted director Christian Louboutin just wrapped filming on an advertisement for Piper-Heidseick champagne starring model Elisa Sednaoui. [WWD]
• Manolo Blahnik says he never wanted to be a celebrity designer, and blames Sex And The City for his unwilling transformation. "If people talk to me about Sex And The City, I get sick," he told the Telegraph. "The taxi drivers recognize me now. It becomes too much and I don't feel comfortable." [PC]
• Sojin Lee's new online fashion venture, Fashionair, has launched. Lee last worked for Net-A-Porter, and her backer is Simon Fuller's company. [Forbes]
• Giorgio Armani designed a custom costume for a Spanish matador. It's grey and spangled. [Telegraph]
• Despite growing sales, profits for 2008 at Armani shrank by 41.4%, to $188.3 million. [WWD]
• Harold Tillman, a British fashion businessman who already owns Jaeger, has apparently acquired the bankrupt house Acquascutum. [ElleUK]
• Tom Binns for Disney might seem like a weird combination, because, well, it's a weird combination. [WWD]
• The Ebony Fashion Fair, an important industry event for black designers and models, is canceling its fall tour. The largest traveling fashion show in the world, Ebony helped launch the careers of talents like Kevan Hall and Tracey Reese, and raised money for various local and national charities including the NAACP and the Urban League. The economy is the culprit. [Examiner]
• Milan Fashion Week has been thrown into "chaos" by a series of re-schedulings to avoid schedule conflicts, which begat new conflicts and new re-schedulings, and then yet more conflicts and re-schedulings. [WWD]

The cover hearkens back to 1991, the last September issue of Vogue we could find that had fewer than 600 pages. For comparison's sake: Last year's had 796, 2007's had a record-breaking 840. And 1996's had 700.

Do you think the advertising crunch and the precipitous decline in consumer spending might make Vogue do something a little different, a little out-there, a little untested?


Why, no!

Charlize Theron, this month's cover subject, has graced Vogue a total of four times — in October, 2000, October, 2004, October, 2007, and now again in September, 2009. In the last three instances, the South African actress was photographed by Mario Testino.


But that's not the only place in the magazine that had us rubbing our eyes with déjà vu. As other bloggers have pointed out, the Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott-shot editorial with Natalia Vodianova as Little Red Riding Hood from this September's Vogue bears a striking resemblance to...


A Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott-shot editorial with model Doutzen Kroes as Goldilocks, which was published in the August, 2007, issue of W.


The Natalia Vodianova spread for Vogue is called "Into The Woods."


The Doutzen Kroes editorial for W is also called "Into The Woods."


Both the editorials even boast creepy masked soft-toy molesters.


Grace Coddington, the fashion editor for this shoot, can sometimes be a little derivative for my tastes; in recent years, we've seen her turn The Wizard of Oz and Romeo and Juliet into editorial spreads that didn't add much to their source material. "Into The Woods" fits perfectly with that trend.


Natalia's absolutely wretched 'do in those pictures is not a fluke: this issue's full of deeply bizarre hair. You took one for the team here, Liya Kebede.


And in this shot, it's as if you can see Karlie Kloss thinking, "Really, Guido Palau? Really?"


I, for one, am getting just a little bit sick of seeing this particular photo re-made. This, David Sims' version...

...owes as much to an interpretation from last September's Vogue by Patrick Demarchelier, featuring model Catherine McNeil...


...as it does to the Richard Avedon original, with Jean Shrimpton, from the September, 1965, Harper's Bazaar.


Dodai already did an excellent LOLVogue! on the rest of David Sims' editorial. Karlie Kloss has apparently wrested the Vogue showjumping title from Caroline Trentini. The St. Louis teenager has an astonishing three editorial appearances in this issue — four if you count an Annie Leibovitz portrait of her, which runs alongside a short profile of Karlie by Sally Singer.


But what's amazing about that Leibovitz shot is just how much it looks like another portrait the legendary photographer recently took of a young starlet.


I'm referring, of course, to the photograph of Miley Cyrus that Annie Leibovitz took for the June, 2008, issue of Vanity Fair. Karlie and Miley are photographed with the same dampened hair, the same skin that's lit extremely pale, and the same red lips on a nude face. They even share a similar pose and both are shot against the same backdrop. The fact is that even though Cyrus and Kloss were roughly the same age when when they were photographed by Leibovitz — Cyrus was 15, Kloss, who only turned 17 earlier this month, would have been 16 — this photo is certain to draw less ire. That says more about our culture's parallel impossible expectations for the few young women who make it in the entertainment business than anything else: we demand that our pop stars remain forever young, and we expect our models to impersonate adult women from the time they hit 5'9".


Steven Meisel has a 16-page editorial with models Liya Kebede, Karen Elson, Coco Rocha, Sasha Pivovarova, and Viktoriya Sasonkina. It's shot in and around Manhattan's Essex House hotel and styled by Grace Coddington.


Something about the spread, though, suggests this was one of Meisel's autopilot days.


This shot, by Meisel for the February, 2009, issue of Vogue, has a different color palette than the "In The Mood" bicycle picture, but the quirky period styling, the models' poses, and the hats, all nonetheless echo it.


This shot, of Viktoriya Sasonkina, from September's Vogue is lovely.


Until you remember that Meisel shot Sasonkina for last September's Vogue Italia in virtually the same pose, and practically the same dress, in a nearly identically-themed 40s editorial.


Liya Kebede, in the September Vogue spread, looks divine.


And "In The Mood" really hits its stride when it starts playing with the murals in the background. Coco Rocha looks like she could be jumping out of that painting.


And I love those creepy hands.


But again, it's hard not to think of Meisel's old Vogue Italia story, with Sasonkina.


Probably the best editorial of the bunch in this year's slimmed-down September Vogue is Steven Klein's offering, "Take Cover."


Karlie Kloss and Caroline Trentini star as two futuristic gals about town.


They are armed and they are dangerous. And what's more, this editorial mercifully does not appear to be a direct re-shoot of anything else.

Fresh ideas: how novel.


Earlier:Harper's Bazaar: Talking About That "Recession" Thing Is Just "Really Annoying" Now
LOLVogue: I Purmd Mai Hare!

Leibovitz is a famed photographer who shoots for titles like Vogue and Vanity Fair — her staff contract with the latter is rumored to net her a cool $2 million per year — and does commercial freelance work for corporations like Disney and luxury behemoths like Louis Vuitton.

Her financial difficulties are not news; Leibovitz first approached Art Capital for a $5 million loan last fall, and borrowed another $10.5 million in December. Art Capital typically charges 6-16% interest; a $5 million principal carried at 6% compound interest for two months, plus an additional $10.5 million loan, also at 6% interest, compounded through this month, would equal just over $24 million, which is in fact the sum that Art Capital filed suit for Wednesday in New York's supreme court.

As collateral, Leibovitz offered the titles to her three Greenwich Village townhouses, and her home in upstate New York — and the rights to her entire archive of work. But why would such a famous artist — and one of the most commercially successful photographers the world has ever known — need to pawn the rights to every photograph she has ever taken or will ever take until the loans are repaid?

Leibovitz was said by the Times to require the $15.5 million line of credit to pay off mortgages and unspecified "financial stresses." Those stresses would seem to include:

• A lawsuit, filed last year by photographic equipment supplier B2Pro, for $227,000 in alleged unpaid bills
• A $385,000 lawsuit filed against her by Nicoletta Santoro, the stylist who worked on one of Leibovitz's Disney campaigns
• Ongoing costs associated with the renovation of her Greenwich Village townhouses

When news of Leibovitz's financial difficulties first surfaced, there was speculation that the photographer was left cash-strapped when she inherited property from her longtime partner, Susan Sontag, in 2004; as an unmarried gay couple, Leibovitz would have been required to pay a steep 45% tax on any inheritance. But it turns out that Sontag and Leibovitz were no longer together by the time of Sontag's death; the essayist bequeathed the bulk of her estate to her son, David Rieff, and in her will left Leibovitz only a maximum of four "articles of my tangible personal property." So, issues of blatant unfairness in the federal inheritance laws aside, it wasn't the "gay tax" that cost Leibovitz millions.

A more likely culprit is the costly renovations to Leibovitz's two townhouses; in 2002, workers for the photographer damaged the foundations of a third, adjoining house, forcing the family who owned it to evacuate their home. (They eventually settled for an undisclosed sum with Leibovitz, after filing a $15 million lawsuit; the terms of the settlement included Leibovitz buying the crippled house.) At the time, neighborhood preservationists whispered that the photographer had intentionally undermined the foundations of the protected houses, which all date from the 1830s, in order to get the go-ahead to perform renovations that would otherwise have been considered too drastic by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, a strategy known as "demolition by neglect." Seven years later, the townhouses are finally repaired — but at who knows what cost.

Now, Art Capital Group is demanding Leibovitz allow real estate agents access to her Greenwich Village properties so they can assess them for sale; the lender's suit against Leibovitz accuses her of "boldly deceptive conduct" and the failure to make any attempt to come up with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of scheduled repayments. Although at the time she took out the loans, Leibovitz agreed to the idea of selling her physical and intellectual property in order to make repayments, since taking the money, Art Capital Group alleges, she has refused to comply with her creditor's attempts to take what she signed over.

It seems unlikely that a woman who last year couldn't come up with $400,000 to pay a freelance stylist, and $200,000 to pay for her photographic equipment, would be able to survive a $24 million judgment against her without being bankrupted. Even those triplet townhouses can't be worth much in Manhattan's present real estate market. If Leibovitz went into this agreement expecting leniency from a company which decorates its New York offices with the masterpieces forfeited by other defaulting debtors, she has been sadly proven wrong.

Earlier:
Is Annie Leibovitz Being Forced To Pay A Gay Tax?

Lender Sues Annie Leibovitz [CityRoom]
That Old Master? It's At The Pawn Shop [NYTimes]
Will Annie Leibovitz Be Forced Into Bankruptcy? [Gawker]
Follow-up: Part of One Annie Leibovitz Lawsuit Dismissed (Corrected) [PDNPulse]
Lawsuits Claim Leibovitz Owes $778K For Photo Services [PDNOnline]
Home Renovation Buried Annie Leibovitz In Debt [P6]
Anne Leibovitz Threatened With Bankruptcy [P6]

• Paris Hilton and Doug Reinhardt were kicked off of a yacht due to "inappropriate" behavior. The couple were making out, to the dismay of other passengers ,who cheered when the captain tossed them off. [Mirror]

• Jessica Biel says she'd love to star in a movie with her boyfriend, Justin Timberlake, someday: "If it was the right thing, yeah, I would love to costar with Justin," she says, "I just don't know what the right thing is, though." [People]
• Clay Aiken has apologized for comments he made about Adam Lambert on his blog: "I do apologize to Adam for my colorful (and negative) choice of words. I hope he can forgive me. I imagine he doesn't give a d—-! God knows he shouldn't." [USWeekly]
• Meanwhile, Adam Lambert is reportedly in talks to become the lead singer of Queen. [Reuters]
• Blind Item: "Which married actor is wildly flamboyant among friends and business associates, but when he sits down with an interviewer or goes out in public, he suddenly reins in the swishing and tries to pass for straight? Who's buying it?" [BlindGossip]
• Katie Holmes will perform at the PBS National Memorial Day Concert. "It's important to tell these stories and honor the sacrifice and service of these men and women and their families," Holmes says, "It's a real gift to be able to portray an American of such strength. I'm excited. I want to do justice to her story." [JustJared]
• Rapper Drake denies that he's dating Rhianna: "It's not like that at all. I'm being honest. She's just a friend, that's all," Drake says, "Nothing at all happened. I have the most respect for her. I think she's so talented." [TheSun]
• Katie Price, aka Jordan, says she wants a second chance with her estranged husband, Peter Andre. "‘I'll take Pete back tomorrow. I'll drop the divorce if he gives me another chance." [DailyMail]
• Peter, however, isn't too sure about a reconciliation: "I wish you had heard MY pleas when we were married." [Mirror]
• Is Zac Efron going to dump Vanessa Hudgens? "Zac's been told that to go from a teen idol to a major movie star, he has to distance himself from his HSM image," says a source, "One big thing that means is no more Vanessa. When people see them together, they think of their characters." [ShowbizSpy]
• "I went to a strip club to prepare for the role but it was a big disappointment. I'd taken these classes on how to dance but if you go to a strip club, no-one's dancing. Everyone just stands there. The girls are all just on stage and it's all about lap dances." -Heather Graham [ONTD]
• Barry Humphries says that if he wrote his own obituary, his alter-ego, Dame Edna would be left out completely: "It would be pretty well a catalogue of excessive compliments. It would just say what a very nice person I am, and what a generous hearted and sentimental person I am, and it wouldn't make any reference to Edna at all." [DailyExpress]
• ""Even though fame came all of a sudden, it didn't come too soon. I had already worked as a waitress in the real world, so I already had my group of friends and I'm still in touch with the same people. Only a few of my friends are actresses. In my friends I find unconditional love."-Jennifer Aniston [ShowbizSpy]
• Janice Dickinson on Tyra Banks' firing of Paulina Porizkova: "Tyra rolls like that, she likes to fire people just about when she's promising them large amounts of money, they get the axe, like I did.... then she takes the money and runs." [Examiner]
• Susan Boyle will perform a duet with Donny Osmond in Las Vegas. [Mirror]
• Annie Leibovitz is closer than ever to bankruptcy. [PageSix]
• "The deeper I got into my addiction, the tighter the lid got on my creativity. When I got sober the lid just came off. In seven months I accomplished more than I could accomplish in three or four years doing drugs."-Eminem [NYTimes]
• "The truth is what I'm a role model for is the ability to change culture, the ability for a young woman who may not be the most popular girl in school or the most beautiful or the best at everything to bust her arse and never give up and make something of herself."- Lady GaGa [ONTD]

• Lindsay Lohan a liar? In the latest issue of Nylon, LL says she's hoping to work with Seth Rogen but "Seth won't call us back." Rogen says:

"That's not true — I never got a call from anyone that works for her." [The Star]

• More Lindsay Lohan drama: A source says she "is spending like crazy" and is living on credit right now. And most of the cash she spends? It's Samantha's. [Gatecrasher]
• Sad face! Agyness Deyn and Albert Hammond Jr. broke up. [NY Mag]
• Has Madonna dumped Jesus Luz? [Just Jared]
• This report says Jesus recently said: "Madonna has an amazing body, is a sexy, kind person and a great mother. The difference in our ages means nothing. She looks like a 30-year-old and has a youthful personality to go with it. I love her and nothing else matters." Which sounds like they are not broken up. [PopDirt]
• By the by, Madonna's nanny gave notice, then her Madgesty told her to leave, immediately. [Daily Mail]
• This paper claims that Guy Ritchie has a black eye, but the photographic evidence is sketchy. [The Sun]
• Jade Goody, dental assistant turned reality-TV star, died Sunday at the age of 27. [AP, NY Times]
• The Jade Goody farewell will be planned by her family. [Mirror]
• Jade Goody leaves behind £4 million for her sons. [Telegraph]
• Amy Winehouse's label isn't thrilled with her new music; they were expecting her "trademark vintage soul" sound and she is now "heavily influenced by reggae," naturally. [The Sun]
• "Bruce Willis Ties Knot With Underwear Model" means he married a woman who has posed for Victoria's Secret. The ceremony took place at Parrot Bay in the Turks & Caicos. [Breitbart, Yahoo via AP]
• Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher and Rumer, Scout and Tallulah attended the wedding. [Star]
• Yes, Ashton Kutcher Twittered a picture of Demi Moore's ass — taken while she was steaming his suit (maybe for the wedding?) Yes, she knew about it. No, I don't know why people are so interested. Like they have never seen a woman bending over before. [Defamer]
• Michael Jackson wants to adopt a kid. No comment. [Gatecrasher]
• Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart are engaged; he decided to put a ring on it. [NY Post, Daily Mail]
• Katie Holmes "played babysitter" for Cruz and Romeo Beckham, taking them — and Suri — out around L.A. over the weekend. [Daily Mail]
• A wake was held for Natasha Richardson on Saturday in Manhattan. [Star]
• Natasha Richardson's funeral was held late Sunday afternoon in upstate New York. [E!, USA Today]
• Another picture from the forthcoming Where The Wild Things Are flick can be found here. Guess what? The kid who plays Max is named Max. [USA Today]
• Winnie Cooper is married, you guys. Danica McKellar got hitched in La Jolla, CA this weekend. [ET]
• Here's everything you want to know about Annie Leibovitz's money troubles — which may have nothing to do with same-sex marriage after all. [Page Six]
• Whoa: Katy Perry is dating Josh Groban? I kissed a (singer who makes people want to) hurl! [Perez]
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• Like House? Like spoilers? This link pretty much tells you who is going to die. [NY Mag]
• Remember that Jennifer Aniston movie, The Baster? This casting call is looking for a "heavy set woman" and a "woman with a round face, small eyes, and upturned nose" to have profanities shouted at them in a scene. Fun? [TMZ]
• Johnny Depp topped a list of stars people would most like to share a candlelit dinner with. [The Star]
• Prince Harry will have lunch with the soldier he called a racial slur. [Telegraph]
• Are you ready for this image-shattering picture of 18-year-old Emma Roberts in the new GQ — in which she is wearing a tanktop and no bra? [Just Jared]
• Hilary Duff is back on TV: First she landed a guest spot on Ghost Whisperer; now she's gonna be on Law & Order: SVU. [E!]
• Speaking of L&O, Mariska Hargitay is headed back to work after a three-week absence. [People]
• Justin Guarini says American Idol sorta sucks: "Every single year, we cannot stand the group performances. I know they can't stand it either. And I think what makes [the group performances] even worse now is that they're lip-synced. They're really prerecorded now." [E!]
• Metallica went on stage at South By Southwest, telling the audience they were a "young band from Norway." Are they still in therapy? [USA Today]
• Kanye West closed SXSW, saying "It feels so good to rock for you tonight." [AP]
• We heard Megan Fox and Brian Austin Green broke up; then we heard they were back together, now we're hearing that she has moved out and is staying in a hotel. Ah, l'amour. [E!]
• Congrats to Natasha Bedingfield, who got hitched in Malibu on Saturday. [E!]
• After the success of that video which is an internet hit, Ricky Gervais and Elmo are working on a show together! [The Sun]
• Flavor Flav turned 50 over the weekend?!?!?! [Hollywood Rag]
• John Mellencamp blogged about the record business for HuffPo. [Huffington Post]
• Jamie Lee Curtis blogged about the "Recession Diet." [HuffPo]
• M.I.A. will play Coachella on April 18. [NY Times]
• "John Cleese halves payout for ex-wife to £650,000 in first celebrity credit crunch divorce." [Daily Mail]
• Blind item! "Which closeted TV icon enjoys "watersports" in his bedroom? His steady stream of gentleman callers are a little grossed out by it." [Gatecrasher]
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• "I'd probably have head-butted her new boyfriend, put her over my shoulder and run off." — Pete Doherty, on what he'd have done if he'd seen Kate Moss at his record label. [The Sun]
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• "I love doing photo shoots. I mean, if I could just sign with IMG and do ad campaigns and model more, I'd do that… because that's fun for me. That's not work." — Lindsay Lohan, to Nylon. [Page Six]
• "A size zero? I've never heard of that. That didn't exist when I was growing up. When did that start? What does it mean?" — Heidi Klum. [Socialite Life]

Goldstein cites a piece by After Ellen's Julia Miranda, which explains that most of Leibovitz's financial woes stem from inheriting the estate of her longtime partner, Susan Sontag. Writes Miranda:

Same-sex couples do not have the same privileges as straight married couples when it comes to inheritance. If your partner passes away and leaves her estate to you, you have to pay up to 50 percent of the value of your inheritance in taxes. However, if you and your partner were recognized as a married couple, you wouldn't have to pay a dime.

Sontag left several properties to Leibovitz, who was forced to pay half of their value in order to keep them. Hence, the gay tax. Goldstein has personal experience with this issue; she notes:

In my household it comes to around $329.25 monthly: that's the gay tax my wife and I shell out for me to be on her health insurance plan, because her company must treat that benefit as additional taxable income. It doesn't matter that our Massachusetts marriage is recognized in New York. Companies pay for their employees' health insurance with pre-tax money through a federal program, and same-sex marriage isn't federally recognized.

Is it a shame that Leibovitz is making headlines for spoofing her own photographs instead of for her struggle? Since she is so high-profile, so visible, couldn't she be a galvanizing voice in the fight for gay marriage? Or is this a case where the personal need not be political?

Annie Leibovitz And The Gay Tax [Salon]
Annie Leibovitz Is In A Jam [AfterEllen]

"Oh, what a beautiful instep you have! Let's put a tarantula on it."
"Foot," Hiro, April 1982.

"My, what lovely lips you have! Let's put a bee on them."
"Bee On Lips," Irving Penn, December 1995.

Sure, maybe it's just milk, but you get the sense that she is not splashing herself — she is forced to stay passive while being doused. Or is this a case of bukkake alert?
"Cult Creams," Irving Penn, June 1996

This one is a composite, but still creepy.
"Cleopatra's Eye," Irving Penn, August 1990.

Obviously, this shot was to be used in some kind of skin-preservation story. Don't want to be leathery! But honestly: Models are human. Can this woman breathe?
"Football Face," Irving Penn, November 2002.

Was there a chiropractor on the set?
"Skirting The Issue," Steven Klein, February 2001.

Ouch.
"Mascara Wars," Irving Penn, July 2001.


Vogue's site claims that these images "investigate the role of beauty in our culture." And some of them are truly beautiful: Irving Penn's "large nude woman seated", Richard Avedon's shot of Twiggy, and Annie Leibovitz's shot of Venus Williams. But it's interesting that the most beautiful photo is the noseless face from 1950. Before things got "edgy." No bugs or bukkake, just some pretty makeup and an interesting concept.





Extreme Beauty In Vogue [Vogue.com]

Over at feminist blog Shakesville, Melissa McEwan writes:

Even when women do what they're meant to do by the fucked-up standards of The Patriarchy-get naked and submit themselves for public objectification-they're going to get mocked for doing it. Because, even though we're ostensibly laughing at the Judd Apatow Boyz for their uproarious send-up of a sexy female-oriented VF cover, implicit in that laughter is a condemnation and marginalization of the female-oriented cover: See how silly it is when a man does it?! Ho ho ho.

Author Amanda Marcotte, on her Pandagon blog:

"I prefer jokes that send up sexist stereotypes, like when Liz Lemon makes a stupid mom joke and high fives herself. This joke, it seems to me, works off the idea that it's stupid to want to put men in an objectified position, ‘cause duh, that's for ladies! The bodysuits just makes it more insulting."

Salon's Rebecca Traister adds:

All this silliness does is amplify the point that men can become famous in Hollywood, and famous enough to be photographed by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair, without having bodies that you want to see unclothed. There is not a similar path to success for Hollywood's women.

But we're really behind Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon, who says:

Between the hack work and the pawning of her photos, I guess Annie Leibovitz really is hard up. That this drivel is being peddled by the same woman who shot one of the most famous male nude photos ever — the beautiful, vulnerable image of John Lennon curled up against Yoko Ono for Rolling Stone, just makes the whole business all the more cynical and pitiful.

See, we're starting to wonder if Vanity Fair is the problem, or if Annie Leibovitz is the problem. She's one of the most famous photographers working right now, but she pushes people of color off of covers, turns black basketball players into gorillas, gets 15-year-old girls to pose half-naked and has no regrets.

As an artist, it is certainly her job to push boundaries and break the rules. But lately it seems that instead of inspiring and innovating, Leibovitz offends and denigrates. What is she doing? What is her goal? To create "art"? Or to rock the boat? Or merely to get paid? On the one hand, she's been generating lots of negative press lately — why would any magazine continue to use her? On the other hand, no publicity is bad publicity, right?

One of These Things Is Not Like the Other [Shakesville]
Quick Take: Funny Or Not? [Pandagon]
Dudes Undress For Vanity Fair [Salon]
Earlier: Vanity Fair: Not In Favor Of Naked Men
Photo Finish
LeBron James "King Kong" Cover
Is Vogue's "LeBron Kong" Cover Offensive?
Miley Cyrus: Fifteen & Topless in Vanity Fair
Is Tween Titillation More Offensive Than Casual Racism?

[All images by Annie Leibovitz.]

Is it funny that the guys (and Annie Leibovitz, who shot both images) spoofed the shot? Sure. But it would have been funnier if the guys were actually naked. Who made this decision? Why bodysuits? It's understandable to try and create a "pale" skin tone for the purposes of recreating the original photograph properly, but Leibovitz is a whiz with lighting. Is the world not ready for Jonah Hill's ass? As for Jason Segel, he already did full-frontal nudity in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. We saw Seth Rogen's bare buttocks in Knocked Up. Why is it that naked woman can appear on the cover of Vanity Fair, yet none of these dudes can expose their bellies? Is it because they're not thin?

Of course, this issue just reflects the problems with nudity in our society in general. When I went to see Friday The 13th, the theater was crowded with men and women, but after the third time a female actress was shown topless, some girl behind me yelled out, "How come we can't see no huevos?" She was asking for balls, but knew that the movie wouldn't show any, because the producers didn't have any. And that's the problem with this "spoof." As any good comedian knows, you have to commit to the joke. This one was done — ahem — half-assed.

[Images: Annie Leibovitz exclusively for Vanity Fair.]

Update: In this video, Leibovitz is seen shooting Mendes and Winslet together and he is wearing the coat. Did she have him remove it on one side to bring out his eyes?

According to the Washington Post, Ms. Obama wears a magenta gown by Jason Wu, the same designer who did her inaugural ball gown. In the photo on the magazine's cover, taken by Leibovitz (who photographed her last year for Paris Match - see image at left):

Obama is leaning on a soft beige sofa at the Hay Adams Hotel, where the first family stayed days before the historic inauguration. Obama is wearing a magenta dress by designer Jason Wu, who designed her inaugural ball gown. Her hand rests under her chin. Her left hand folded beneath her. She is wearing a diamond that you do not often see her wearing in recent appearances. Behind her, light streams in between curtains. It is the pose of the odalisque.

Ha ha, the language in this WaPo piece is almost as affected as that found in Vogue itself! Anyway, other details include the following:

• Inside the magazine, Obama wears a Narciso Rodriguez dress and holding an old-fashioned phone. ("She is not talking. She is either listening or on hold.") What does it mean???
• Obama tells writer Andre Leon Talley that she is still trying to find a church for the family to attend and that she's focused on her girls.
• Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour says, "Change was the clarion call of Barack Obama's election campaign, though I don't think any of us at Vogue initially realized that would include the difference that was going to be made by First Lady Michelle Obama's wardrobe."

More in the link below.


Update: Apparently the WaPo took the potentially offensive "odalisque" reference out of writer DeNeen L. Brown's copy; but ha: we have a screengrab.

Michelle Obama to Grace Cover of Vogue Magazine [Washington Post]

Related: Odalisque [Dictionary.com]