There are so many things to love about September. The first day you get to wear a cute jacket (in my case, this amazing Alice Cooper number custom made for me); the beginning of new television shows (although Raising the Bar and The Mentalist don't really give me hot pants the same way the summer premier of Mad Men did); and, most importantly, the magazines. Time Out and New York roll out all the cultural to-do lists, and all the fashion magazines are back-breakingly fat with new ad campaigns and fall preview editorials.
W, my favorite American magazine, was the one I look forward to the most (and the only one I have a subscription to–sorry, Vogue, but you put Jennifer Aniston on the cover ten too many times for me!!) But to my surprise and, well… horror, for lack of a better word, I found a robotic glam Kate Hudson on the cover.
I thought most of the editorials of this usually forward magazine were a bit boring: stark black and white photography in Istanbul where you can barely see the clothes,?Kate Moss's nipples (yawn), more Kate Hudson… but, mired among the bores was Jurgen Teller's masterful Tilda Swinton spread.
I love Teller, and I love him even more with each photo I see. His eye for ugly beauty: that flat, over-blown lighting, that attitude (he's said, “Most fashion photography is done by gay people finding women sexy, which is sort of not sexy at all, at least to a heterosexual man. She's so retouched, so airbrushed, without any human response at all, and, well, you don't really want to fuck a doll.”), that rebellious nature (he often uses a point and shoot camera rather than fancy equipment), and those eyes. While most of his self portraits are purposely unflattering (though the one of him crawled up in Charlotte Rampling's lap has made me want to be her even more), there's no denying he is one lustful German bear (and I don't mean the g kind of bear–sorry boys, he's straight and married to art dealer Sadie Coles).
There was an exhibit of his work at Lehmann Maupin earlier this year, but you can always see his stuff in the pages of any fashion mag–his is the vision behind the Marc Jacobs campaign and he took those spectacular Stephanie Seymour portraits I've mentioned before.
But what do you think?