Herbert List was a German photographer who worked for magazines like Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Life. He's known for his classical male nudes, taken in Italy and Greece, which have been highly formative for modern photography, with fashion photographers like Bruce Weber and Herb Ritts, just to name the most obvious, being clearly influenced by his work.
"A magazine is a place of dialogue, questioning, experimenting, ranting, namedropping, quoting, arguing, a place for flattery and iconoclasm. A magazine is like a party in print." - Marc Valli, the editor of Elephant.
Talking about elephants, the baby elephants wearing Chanel couture are so cute! The photo is by Bruce Weber, of course.
More pictures of Our Lady of the Infinite Crazies in drag. Anna Wintour is LOLing somewhere.
Feeling constipated? Could be the soiled socks you swallowed Lady!
Sniffing the ammonia fumes (yum yum) that rise off the urinal - truly Gaga.
The best picture of the series: And it's because we can't see her face. Yay!
I'd longed to see this 2001 film and finally, visiting PH at his new Waterloo Street flat, did. The only thing you need to know is: The book is better. In truth, there's something authentic in there somewhere (there must be - the long ramble certainly reeks of ernestly striving after something), but in the making it's been banalized out of existence. 
Unfortunately, the movie feels like you'd asked your favourite old queen what they really, really like and getting a three-hour answer. You sort of regret asking, and just want to say 'speed it up aunty!'. It's a scrapbook style sinking into Weber-World, and you could be looking at a very long Ralph Lauren commercial for all you know. As Weber's record of his obsession with Peter Johnson, a high-school athlete Weber commemorated in torrential detail and made a big model of in all his commercial work, it seems somehow embarrassingly shallow, reducing the young man to basically his youth. 
There's no sex even though that is the most obvious theme in Weber's ouvre, and reduces his work to a carnival of surfaces. This gives the film an embalmed effect. Every natural instinct seemed frantically perfumed over, making every vignette hollow and fake.
A: You know what? Models today really suck! I guess the business has become so unwieldy. There's no time for the cream rise to the top. Demand goes too fast now and there's no time to discover these amazing beauties. I'm not sure about Maria Von Hartz (right) though... Bruce (Weber)sure knows how to pick 'em!!!
A: I loved Clotilde! (Top: In a Bruce Weber for Ralph Lauren ad)
D: Carine has referenced this hair and styling before...
A: I used want this top soo badly! And I would try to draw this HAIR!! with these girls with black eyeliner and really light eyes! Did you too? I couldn't get enough of her.
D: That YSL ad is classic, the outfit and styling... OMG! This would make an excellent cover hor? I used to be obssessed wth Esme Marshall and Janice Dickenson you know, 'cos they look a bit Asian (Pan-asian!... this term reminds me so much of those Tangs days). That Esme shoot in China can u remember??? By Arthur Elgort? Aiyo it influenced me for life and I'm telling you...
Rosemary also I liked 'cos she's also a bit Asian... Do u remember this Vogue story with Rosemary and she went to a spa? I think it was Baden Baden, shot by Dennis Piel ah yooo... It influenced me forever le...
A: OMGOMGOMG! With Isabella in it too!!! Can I just DIE??!! Was Mirabella the editor then? There's that shot of Isabella in the pool cupping her breasts and Rosemary standing above her or something like that! I still have that issue at home as I'm sure you do!
During the week (Wednesday), J D Salinger, 91, the Garbo of letters (famed for not wanting fame), died at his 90 acre home in Cornish, N.H., where he had lived in seclusion for more than 50 years. I'll pull out my dusty copy of The Catcher in the Rye (1951) for another read. I've read it quite a few times already and am always struck by the wonderfully immediate whine that Salinger fashioned for the narrator Holden Caulfield — is it technique, or isn't it? It's hard to tell. I'm not good at writing dialogue (my attempts always come off stiff and arch) so I'm in awe at Salinger's colloquial, idiomatic language, his uncanny ventriloquism, a sharp ear for the rhythms and cadences of colloquial speech; And also, his ability to create stories within stories naturally. So, yes, I guess I am talking about technique. But it's also a gift, I think, something not easy to learn. On top of the amazing method, I never read The Catcher in the Rye without getting a lump in my throat and the prick of tears in my eyes, and this 'emotional' quality has made me gift this book over the years to not a few of those rebels and misfits amongst my friends (yes, there are many of those!). Holden Caulfield represented all the sensitive waifs who drift through life tossed and bruised by a vulgar and materialistic world, the freaks who never really outgrew adolescent feelings, the innocents who have never let go of their inner child. In this sense, there is overlap in his work and Bruce Weber's (the sentimentality and 'cuteness' is certainly similar).
Mario Testino's new Taschen book MaRIO DE JANEIRO Testino (what a stupid title, and yes, it is spelt this way) will probably look as banal as it sounds. I can already imagine it: Nothing you haven't already seen in V 100 times (and more). And it contains an essay by Gisele Bündchen (are you hyperventilating? I didn't think so). I used to love Testino's work. Now I wonder why. Truly, Bruce Weber's tribute to Rio seems like a masterpiece compared to this.
Testino: "When I was 14, on holiday, and going from my house to the beach and seeing everyone walk everywhere in their tiny bathing suits—the girls and boys were so sexy and carefree and wild—I just could not believe it."
Whatever, Ms Testino.
Doesn't this have die die must have written all over it? Cartier I Love You celebrates 100 years of Cartier in America. The only drawback is that it contains an essay by Ingrid Sischy. I mean, when I read that, I paused on my tippy toes immediately and all the bells went clang clang clang. This woman, along with Andre Leon Talley, lost her marbles way back in the '80s. That she continues to find work is all that is wrong with traditonal media. Really.
Now that you have seen some of the "greeting cards" spread by dear old Bruce Weber here for 
this season's V Man, you probably won't need to buy it when it's out, would you? It's really 
more of the same. It's starting to look a bit old no? And getting repetitious, banal
lacking in emotion and novelty, seemingly made specifically for the split second-perving
on the internet. And I love Bruce Weber. Sigh...he's gone so bad!
