“I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin.”
So says Raymond Chandler’s famed literary detective, Phillip Marlowe, in the 1940 novel Farewell, My Lovely. It’s the kind of Chandlerism that defined both the writer’s style and the lead character, himself as hardboiled as the ladies he pursues. Where the fashion world is concerned though, it’s not the detective we revere most but the literary stereotype of the femme fatale. She’s made up of hard stares and sharp words, and she sees the world from behind a curtain of cigarette smoke that curls from her artfully made-up lips. She’s the kind of woman we fantasise of being.
Dew Magazine‘s 5th issue, it’s biggest ever at 342 pages, is dedicated to the art of cinema. But it’s less about recreating exact scenes and more about tapping into the nostalgia that wells up in a viewer at the pleasure of something truly cinematic.
The lead editorial harks back to those days when Film Noir was at its peak, though Enokae’s photography and Dinta Jakile’s styling mixes the cinematic nostalgia with the gloss of the present day.
Fringed model Klara Krukenberg is the shoot’s femme fatale. It’s titled Murder, My Sweet – coincidentally the title of the 1944 film based on Chandler’s aforementioned book.
You can view the full shoot from Dew’s Cinema issue at the gallery above.
