Marc Jacobs' Go-To Photographer Refused to Photograph Miley Cyrus

Gazing at Miley Cyrus’ spring/summer 2014 campaign for Marc Jacobs, one can discern a lot. Miley looks very forlorn by a gloomy sea — a sort of post-apocalyptic beach motif carried over from Jacobs’ spring 2014 runway show, only the trash scattered all over the runway has been replaced by models who are not Miley Cyrus. Even more interestingly: this image was not shot by David Sims, not by Juergen Teller, who has (I think) done every print campaign for Jacobs in recent memory — including the Marc by Marc Jacobs spring 2014 campaign that came out earlier this month. So what happened?

Um, well, according to Marc Jacobs, Teller just didn’t want to. “I have worked with Juergen for years and love him as an artist,” Jacobs told WWD. “He just didn’t want to shoot her.” Wow. Good thing you’re surrounded by icy post-apocalyptic sea water with which you can treat that burn, Miley.

This leaves us free to speculate about why Teller didn’t want to work with Cyrus: I think we can definitively rule out her love of the exposed nipple as a contributing factor, given Teller’s oeuvre (link NSFW). Maybe he’s not a fan of her twerking antics or tongues in general? Maybe he was busy with stuff, like shooting approximately one billion photographs for W? Suffice to say, Miley’s relationship with fashion this year has been quite an emotional/stylish rollercoaster. (On one hand, she was one of the few people who didn’t look stupid at the Met Ball! On the other, remember the rumors that she was denied a Vogue cover because Anna Wintour is sick of her shit? Sigh. Such tumult.)

On the bright side, Miley has Marc Jacobs in her corner, and very passionately so: he told WWD, “We all just love her and her entire being, her energy, her talent, her
intelligence, everything. There’s nothing I don’t like about
her. She is just genuine and very natural.”