“The candle-buds opened their wide white flowers… Their scent spilled out into the air and took possession of the island.”
Occasionally a fashion editorial that has precious little to do with fashion slips its way into the pages of a magazine. Often their title pages will spout quotes from famed literary works, or they’ll come tackling serious social issues, or perhaps they’ll use nudity instead of clothing as a way to convey fashion. If you hadn’t already guessed Mert & Marcus’ latest work for Love Magazine is one of those shoots, more art than fashion, more skin than clothing.
It’s hard to pin-point a single inspiration or story. There’s the William Golding lines it quotes, fittingly from the savage Lord Of The Flies, seemingly a comment on human nature that ties to the title of What Lies Beneath. Then there’s the apparent mythological references, where Mariacarla Boscono has something of a Leda And The Swan moment, and Lara Stone could easily pass for a nubile water nymph.
The reality is though that a story – a coherent, chronological story – is by no means a requirement of a photo shoot. It can leave your imagination to fill in the gaps. Instead a theme, in this case “soft, romantic fashion with dangerous undercurrents”, can be enough to spur on the imagination, to create a mood. Mert & Marcus’ dark island of exploring what lies beneath the surface does that rather well.
You can click on the thumbnails to view the shoot in full.
Inspiration or plagiarism: Love Magazine (3 Aug 2011)
