We return to spontaneous photos, without filters and above all, real.
It had been announced for a long time, but nobody believed it. We return to the aesthetics of spontaneous photos, without filters, even stolen and, above all, real. How do I know that the time has come to adopt this trend yes or yes? Because they have sent me a press release with official photos of the dinner in honor of Catherine Deneuve during the Saint Laurent Venice film festival, in which there is one of Eva Herzigova leaning spontaneously, looking at the camera, sticking out her tongue, out of focus, blurred by the flash and with the Argentine film director Gaspar Noé in the background, looking askance . An air more like an ‘Erasmus travel souvenir’ than a social event with a gala ‘dress code’.
Gaspar Noé and Eva Herzigova in Venice
This photo marks a before and after for the ‘fashion system’. Fashion firms take care to the millimeter of all the material they share with the press. If they have sent this, among another ‘usual’, it is with a clear intention . That of pivoting towards an aesthetic that has more room in BeReal than in a careful editorial of a high-end magazine. My reading is that the intention behind this subtle movement is to return to authenticity. And welcome.
The model Sharlom Harlow, at the exit of the parade.
For those who do not know what BeReal is, it is the new social network of the Z generation , in which they upload photos without filters and without prior preparation (read smearing on ‘porraporos’ makeup and putting on an ultra-studied outfit). The photos are spontaneous and 100 for 100 reais , like Eva Herzigova doing bows at a social event.
Actually, this 49-year-old model comes full circle. Because when you think about it, you have more in common with generation Z than your previous generation (the ‘millennial’). And it is that Eva, who belongs to the so-called lost generation (generation X), like her contemporary ‘top models’, grew up without internet and without Instagram ‘beauty’ filters. This is why she fits so well with the new (and old) ‘non-aesthetic’ aesthetic.
The ‘top models’ of the 90s come from an era in which ‘likes’ did not exist. His ‘followers’ cut out his photos from fashion magazines and pasted them in school folders. They don’t take screenshots that they save to the iPhone’s photo library. We are talking about a time even pre-Tumblr and pre-MySpace… pre-everything. A time when Anna Wintour and Karl Lagerfeld communicated by fax from New York to Paris and vice versa, and it was considered the height of technology.
It is paradoxical that when the photos were printed in specialized shops –and each reel was worth its own–, we took many spontaneous photos, while now, when you can take as many as you want, you look at every last detail before shooting.
The reappearance of the ’90s top models’ in the ‘fashionista’ scene represents a return to the trend of the impulsive. He left you graphic documents that prove it. As the zennials say on TikTok, “I come with receipts” or what is the same, ‘I come with the receipts’.
Eva Herzigova and Carla Bruni, at the Saint Laurent dinner in Venice.
The ‘top models’ of the 90s Christy Turlington, Amber Valletta, Kate Moss and Shalom Harlow, at the Fendi fashion show in New York
Proof number one and conclusive: the latest Fendi show that took place a few weeks ago during New York Fashion Week and brought together the iconic models of the 90s: Linda Evangelista (on the runway), Kate Moss , Amber Valletta , Christy Turlington and Shalom Harlow (all in the ‘front row’) to celebrate 25 years of their iconic bag, the ‘Baguette’ model. No one overshadowed them, not even the queen of premeditation: Kim Kardashian.
