“I’m made of plastic like a human doll,” sings one Miss Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta – otherwise known as Lady Gaga – in Perfect Celebrity, the fourth (and forthcomingly self-referential) track to her latest album, Mayhem. “You push and pull me; I don’t hurt at all,” she adds.
Aside from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, there’s perhaps little literature more culturally relevant on the follies and foibles of fame than Madame Fame Monster’s most recent release.
Because our collective cultural preoccupation with Rodeo Drive princesses on the arms of their boy-band beaus or waterside WAGs sporting tiny frames, big bags, and zero knowledge of the offside rule – appears to know no bounds.
Or at least, that’s how things used to be before the dog days of the Internet.
Which is why it was such a surprise when, earlier this year, our FYPs suddenly seemed to be populated by a fresh influx of stock photo imagery starring Amber Valletta, Alessandra Ambrosio, Claudia Schiffer, and Paris Hilton—replete with Juicy Couture velour, Motorola Razrs, and Balenciaga City bags.
Except – as a wafer-thin watermark reveals – the BBags hadn’t always been there. Instead, they were part of Demna’s latest (and possibly last?) campaign for the reissued Le City, artificially superimposed onto these ladies with a precision that borders on the supernatural. Who would’ve guessed?
All things old, it appears, have become new again. And now it’s not just the archives, but the adverts too!
The Plights of Paparazzi Pictures
But Demna isn’t the only creative to tap into the print paparazzi archives for their artistic conundrums, and this isn’t his first time doing so.
In 2018, for instance, Balenciaga models (including a generously heeled Stella Tennant) were shot fleeing from the iPhone cameras of fake French fans (complete with the blurred-out faces of passers-by Parisians). A previous campaign for the Le City saw it-girls like Camille Charriere and Devon Lee Carlson in a fake front row with their recently revived receptacles in tow.
Before Balenciaga, there was Bottega, where Matthieu Blazy collaborated with Getty Images and Backgrid in a paparazzi-style campaign starring Kendall Jenner and A$AP Rocky in head-to-toe branded garbs (with reporter Melanie Miller jogging along to keep up). And before Bottega, there was Gucci’s ill-fated effort to cast celebrity couple Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny in an airport-themed campaign seemingly straight off the pages of TMZ.
Unlike overly curated campaigns, these editorials feel more raw, unplanned, and, by extension, authentic. They hark back to the Y2K when, in a bid to expand readership, tabloids like People magazine, US Weekly, and OK! would go head-to-head to hunt down the celeb circuit. When seemingly innocuous images of Ben Affleck buying books or Faith Hill drinking a milkshake at Johnny Rockets would sell for $10,000 a pop (a photo of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston walking down the beach went for a staggering $500,000!)
In short, they hark back to simpler times when print was in its prime, pockets ran deep, and Cate Blanchett wasn’t on Cameo.
On the Escapist Pleasures of Print
But it wasn’t just the pre-recession moolah that separated this period of print.
For many who couldn’t afford to get their hands on the latest Chloé Paddy or Vuitton Baggy, editorials and advertisements were a gateway into a different world. A world where Plum Sykes purrs on national TV about working at Vogue HQ in chiffon Dolce & Gabbana skirts or Chloë Sevigny magically ends up in Sonic Youth music videos in thrifted tops and fishnet sandals.
Because it led you to believe that – perhaps by sticking cut-outs of a sweat-drenched Gisele Bündchen with her blindingly blinged-out Dior Saddle onto the walls of your childhood bedroom – you too could help yourself to a slice of that cool. Perhaps by copping yourself a similarly non-sensible under-the-arm number (albeit for a fraction of the cost and clout), the very act of sweating itself would be more glamorous, even if you were in Nowheresville, Nebraska.
As Jonathan Anderson, until recently of Loewe, says, ‘There is nothing better if you want to engage with fashion and you have no money than being able to get some printed matter from the brand. If nothing else, you can get a book. This is incredibly important. It’s a way of reaching a different demographic.’
Ultimately, the appeal of print was in their implied human touch: the blur of a bystander on a ridiculously pricey paparazzo picture, the aggressive airbrushing on a model’s cheekbone, the utterly mundane, yet fascinatingly gripping act of living – moving, sweating, smoking or otherwise taking up space on the slick pages of a glossy – your red MSCHF boots or million-dollar Speedy bags – designed with virality, not vitality in mind – could never!
But Print Isn’t Quite Dead
15 years ago, art critic Boris Groys declared of the digital industrialization of pictures: “Mechanical reproduction may be understood as the lifeless repetition of the dead image.” Today, however, the tides have turned, and the same could be said of print, Yet, this isn’t to say that print is dead.
Even as magazines like Glamour and Teen Vogue have exclusively shifted operations online, others in the Condé Nast repertoire, like The New Yorker and Vogue, staunchly hold onto their physical foothold.
Except print now is less about its contents and more about a bonus flex for advertisers. Heritage houses with stratospheric marketing budgets—not to mention access to the best photographers, art directors, models, and stylists in the business—can still choose to operate within the carefully controlled, sterile environment of high-end editorials. The resulting product, therefore, is always perfect and poised, which, in turn, makes it all the more unnatural.
As Imran Ahmed, founder and editor-in-chief of Business of Fashion, chimes in, “The state of the fashion-magazine cover is somewhat diluted by the fact that anything can be a cover. So, anyone could put a big logo on an image and call it a cover. And brands — even really, really prestigious media brands — are doing digital covers, whatever that means, right?”
And hence, it’s still the grainy ‘90s adverts for Ralph Lauren and J. Crew that twenty-somethings on TikTok are turning to for their fix of old money #fitspiration. It’s gossipy fan accounts like Deux Moi that the citizens of the cyber-verse frequent to gawk at a Jacob Elordi frolicking barefoot across LA (complete with a matcha latte and a Bottega Andiamo in tow).
Because what we’re continually seeking in an increasingly shallow world is depth. The depth that goes deeper than the surface-level aesthetics on social media. A kind of raw gut sensuality that draws on the strength of emotion – be it love or hate. Because in a world devoid of feeling, we long to feel.
And somehow, a twenty-year-old tabloid spread of Paris Hilton in varying shades of nauseating pink manages to do just that.
