Whereas the Fall and Winter of 2009 will be known for a collection of print ads in which models showed a marked inability to actually sit in a chair (witness Kristen McMenamy tensely reclining on a sofa filled with cats for Lanvin, Madonna grasping her bag in petrified paranoia on a daybed for Louis Vuitton, and Jennifer Connelly testing Newton’s Law of Gravity for Balenciaga), the first spring of the new decade looks like it will be defined by a lack of heads.
At Prada, only a portion of the head is missing, as Rasa Zukauskaite is visible till just above the upper lip. Over at Celine, however, they took things to extremes and mercilessly chopped off both feet and heads. While this dismemberment may not be appreciated by fans of the models being treated so cavalierly, it does raise the question of what the focus should be in the images used for advertising purposes. After all, the end goal is to sell the clothes, bags, and related ephemera that the designer creates; after several seasons of ads where the clothing has played second fiddle to the art direction it’s somewhat refreshing to be able to clearly see what a skirt or a bag actually looks like.
