Sexy People Having Sexy Sex, Courtesy Of French Vogue

Consider the plight of Carine Roitfeld. In a time when every politician, sports pro, and dude-who-likes-Nazi-memorabilia is acting as if he’s on a mission to show how tawdry and dumb sex can be, she still has to make sex sexy.

In the new Vogue Paris, Daria Werbowy and artist Francesco Vezzoli spend ten pages basically looking like they are having sex. Mario Testino observes.

I’d be a little nervous about that cigarette, personally.

Don’t even bother looking for a “narrative” here. There is none. Just sexy people. Looking sexy. As if they’re about to…you know.

The gray clothes, the gray background, the nondescript 1970s tubular-steel office furniture — everything here directs attention on these bodies.

Carine Roitfeld having exhausted the narrative interest of both devil worship and negligent motherhood, I guess sex is what she has left to fall back on.

Apparently this story has something to do with Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg, who, in the words of Vogue Paris, “Enshrined in song, barely 40 years ago, the flip side of ecstasy.”

In fact, the direct inspiration for this editorial was probably this story shot by Francis Giacobetti. He photographed the real Gainsbourg and Birkin for Playboy-style French men’s magazine Lui in 1974.

The original was even more rapey. Progress!

Vogue Paris images via

Earlier:
French Vogue And Ambivalent Modern Motherhood
French Vogue: Devil Worship Is The New Black!