Born in France in 1985, Marie Piovesan signed with Marilyn Agency in
2011, at the age of 26. She debuted at Fashion Week in October the same year,
appearing for YSL and Miu Miu, also opening the Celine show.
In December, she finished her inaugural year with an editorial for
Interview magazine. ‘Reed Krakoff’ was a profile piece, exploring the new
American must-have label. A recent addition to the international fashion scene,
it has been typified as an alternative to Michael Kors and Ralph Lauren’s
vision of high-end luxury. Reed Krakoff explores luxurious textures but in a
postmodern way, defying the expectation that ‘luxury’ fashion can’t be edgy or
daring.
Marie made her couture debut in January 2012, walking in the Spring /
Summer Valentino show. Within the space of a few months, Piovesan would prove
that couture, either by label or by attitude, would be her true comfort zone.
Having a face that lends itself readily to directional fashion, Marie comes
equipped with the skills necessary to embody and translate that most difficult
of sartorial genres.
In February, Marie conquered RTW, with a massive season of 40 shows. All
the biggest labels booked Marie including Marc Jacobs, Louis Vuitton and
Valentino. Piovesan was also a ready favourite with newer labels such as Haider
Ackermann. Autumn 2012 looks set to be a season celebrating the dark arts, with
artisan touches from Marc Jacobs and Valentino in particular, with Jacobs’
models trawling the catwalk in huge Dr.Seuss-style hats courtesy of milliner
Stephen Jones. The palette for A/W 2012: black, grey with splashes of dark
green and maroon may be perfect for a money-spinner season, but its heart is
rooted in something bigger. The best collections combined wearability with
broad strokes of creativity, again, disproving the theory that the two have to
be mutually exclusive.
Marie’s association with high fashion’s quirky side continued with an
editorial for ‘Love’ magazine. Shot in
video format, ‘Fan Club’ (directed by Ruth Hogben), pays homage to the chorus
lines of 1940’s Hollywood musicals. Featuring Ajak Deng, Kati Nescher, Hye Park
and Aymeline Valade, the video profiles the Louis Vuitton blockbuster
collection. Love it or hate it, its range of influence this summer is
everywhere.
Deceptively coy, but full of charm, the collection is rapidly
coming to define Spring / Summer 2012.
Marie’s skills in ‘real time’ modelling continued into February with an
editorial for www.models.com. The
short film, ‘Committed’, acts as a showcase for new talent including Codie
Young, Isabelle Melo and Kelly Mittendorf. Showing that you can model in ‘real
time’ is becoming as important as how you perform in still photographs. As
fashion employs new media to promote itself, moving well on camera is now a key
skill for any new model.
In March, Piovesan made her Italian Vogue debut, not only getting a
leading editorial but the cover of its famous couture supplement. The
intersection where art and fashion meet, this is justifiably what Italian Vogue
is known for. Its international reputation for translating couture and showing it
at its best is well-established.
The editorial, ‘The Lady in Spring’, is Vogue Italia’s interpretation of
the ladylike trend. Featuring epic, pleated gowns from Dior; Valentino’s
obsession with lace and Armani Prive’s smart play on textures, this is an
editorial designed to stimulate thought as much as desire.
While some editorials let themselves wash over you, others pointedly
make you stop and demand you look closer.
The complexity of the styling insists that we take a moment to ‘read’
the clothes the way we would read a book; taking in every detail and nuance.
Italian Vogue not only respects haute couture, it knows that in order to
appreciate it, you must understand it. Sometimes criticised for being
inscrutable, haute couture is only too willing to offer up its secrets if you
give it a chance. Couture may be complex, but it can also be immensely
rewarding; it isn’t about indulgence, but exploration. The recent innovations
reaching the red carpet at Cannes Film Festival – diaphanous skirts attached to
beaded bodices; daring cutaways and beautifully evocative prints – every one of
those concepts started life as a couture design. What once seemed outlandish now
seems both covetable and beautiful.
Marie’s performance in the Italian Vogue editorial is extraordinary, but
not obtrusive; it adds another layer of meaning to the image rather than
distract us from the clothes. Sometimes couture demands drama from its model,
at other times, it needs a more subtle finish. Marie provides the latter with a
sophistication that only really comes from ‘getting’ what the designer is
trying to say. Knowing photographers and editors is all part of a model’s job,
but if you don’t engage with what you’re being asked to wear, the resulting performance
might be good, but it won’t be great.
Squeezing in a conceptual beauty editorial for the March edition of
Interview, Marie then got her moment in the spotlight when she was hired to
represent Celine in their Spring / Summer campaign.
Photographed by Juergen Teller, the campaign plays against the label’s
previous incarnation under Michael Kors, whose creative directorship steered
the brand into becoming a byword for super-luxurious glamour. When Phoebe Philo
took over the reins in 2008, after her highly successful stint at Chloe, the
label became a very different animal. Since Phoebe’s signing, Celine has
evolved into an exercise in studied luxury. It was a radical switch from the
Kors-esque glamour to a more loosely-drawn, modern interpretation of what
luxury means.
Marie in this campaign wears the white shirt-dress that is the kingpin
of the entire collection. The simple shape, the impeccable tailoring are by
definition luxurious (the shirt-dress doesn’t come cheap), but it is a very new
way of wearing high-end fashion. Celine is still about luxury; as much as it
ever was, but now, the genius is not on show, but behind-the-scenes.
Piovesan’s affiliation with ground-breaking fashion continues with an
incredible multi-page shoot for the April issue of Interview. Photographed by
Fabien Baron, ‘Goya’, is an unapologetically epic shoot featuring the very best
of this season’s RTW and couture. Styled to the nth degree with grand silhouettes and supersized jewellery, the
editorial is named after the Spanish artist who made his name exploring the
grotesque and disturbing. Goya’s unsettling but intimate portraits, including
‘The Mourning of the Duchess of Alba’ (1797), are clearly the inspiration for
the editorial. With the Duchess wearing metres of black Spanish lace, she is
poised, self-assured with plenty of attitude – an early example of what’s
required when modelling couture.
Tracing its roots back through 18th and 19th
century art, couture has been the status symbol of choice for art’s wealthy patrons.
With ready-to-wear clothing not available until the 1920’s, society portraits painted
by Thomas Gainsborough and later John Singer Sargent, made the clothes the main
event. Gainsborough made his fortune by conveying the delicate nature of lace
and silk – committing these fabrics to canvas provided the ultimate challenge for
the ambitious painter. John Singer Sargent, who painted portraits of New York’s
emerging elite, also made light work of the new fashions being worn. The velvet
sensuality of his ‘Portrait of Madame X’ (1884) compared to the cotton
pinafores of ‘The Daughters of Edward Darley Bolt’ (1882), are prime examples
of how fashion has always been in the spotlight. The sitters may draw you in,
but the real work is in the fabric: getting brushstrokes to resemble silk can
only be done by a master. Nearly 90 years after Sargent’s death, the brush has
been replaced by a camera and the likes of Meisel, Testino and Demarchelier are
continuing to carry the torch.
What is evident from looking at the Goya editorial is that Marie
Piovesan understands that she is the sitter, and the dress the star. She
injects a sense of history into her work that gives her modelling, whether it
is on the runway or in front of a camera, a greater depth and substance.
Blessed with a face that is traditional as it is modern, Piovesan’s gift to the
fashion industry is in reminding it of where it came from. Once a pleasure for
the privileged few; dressing fashionably is now accessible for billions of
people. In the space of 200 years, we’ve viewed fashion from a painter’s
perspective to the global lens of YouTube: however it is interpreted, fashion
continues to thrive because it continues to learn from its past. The
never-ending narrative of fashion may be told differently, but the message is
always the same: a good model and photographer work the stage for our applause,
but ultimately it’s fashion that takes the encore.
HELEN TOPE
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