BULLETT

An early oughts edition of Jane, or maybe it was Nylon—whatever, some sad mag I was reading a decade-plus ago (okay, fiiiine, it was likely Teen Vogue)—anyway, this girly glossy had a feature story on Pants Vs. Skirts. This was a big story. Tell us: are you a pant girl or a skirt girl? Do you like the masculine ease of a crotch of fabric or do you prefer to feel the air between your thigh gap? Pros for pants: run, walk, skip, jump, skate, cartwheel. Pros for skirts: you can more easily fuck in a bathroom stall. Telling ya, Teen Vogue was radical in ’01.

In the years embracing the millennium, I was wearing pants so wide they could have passed for a skirt were it not for the woosh sound that issued with each stride. So when I read this feature debate I was like why you gotta be so dichotomous, magazine copy writers trying to sell me things, I can have it any way I want. Skirts Over Pants. Peplum skirted pants. Pants with rises so dropped they look like skirts. Skirts that trompe l’oeil like trousers. The mixology is limitless. And trending right now.

While I was dashing reportage into my vodka-wet annual day planner, I kept ticking little dots of indigo ink onto the page, trying to remember what this whole charade reminded me of. It wasn’t until the next morning, sore from the open bar and its tenders who clearly weren’t hired for their mixology skills, that I remembered. The violet and aquamarine, the plasticity and waxed grooming, the ‘90s retrofuturism, the jumbo screens, the hierarchical stage design, the voice booming over loudspeaker, “AAAND NOW, GRIMES.”

Hunger Games, duh!

Would that I had a more cultured reference, but this is Versus Versace in the 21st century (Rodarte, Black Swan; Balenciaga, Twilight; Chanel, Anna Karenina; Prada, The Great Gatsby; Versace, Hunger Games).

“Thank you, Donatella!” Claire ‘Grimes’ Boucher squealed as she waved adorably off of one of four stages. During Grimes’s set, Donatella appeared in a glass cage to watch her hired pop ingenue play, but immediately all nearby eyes and cameras turned towards the Italian designer. Donatella is the real rockstar. Who wears leather better? Around the same time as Donatella’s Instagram photo op, someone sparked up a joint. The cigarettes had been going all night, because we own this shit, but the waft of my favorite skunk meant it was a real party #madchill.

Okay, let’s get this over with. Who: Donatella Versace and Jonathan (W.) Anderson with performances by Maxwell, Dead Sara, Grimes, and the rapper Angel Haze. What: a runway presentation and launch party for J.W. Anderson’s one-off capsule collection collaboration with Donatella’s little sister line, Versus Versace. When: last night into this morning. Where: the Lexington Avenue Armory in Midtown East, New York, NY. Why: “The young heart of Versace is getting a rebellious new look. Iconic, seasonless fashion for those that experiment in life, in love, in style.”

The only other times I’ve been in the Lexington Avenue Armory have been for MoCCA Fest, an arty comic-con that I booth bitch every year for Drawn & Quarterly. When I first swept through the Armory last night, I laughed at how different the place seemed than MoCCA. I got caught in the center of a powwow between Hanne Gaby Whatever and many other models in heels, male and female. 5’4 in my Nikes, I couldn’t see anything but rib bone. (At MoCCA, the guy that Comic Book Guy was based off of wears a Superman t-shirt and steampunk isn’t a joke.) By around 11:30pm last night, though, when the rumors of a Lady Gaga performance echoed loudest (no show), the Versus party started to look a lot like a comic con.

The freaks were out. LA cellulite in a creeping mini skirt. Tyra Sanchez or a great impersonator (of an impersonator, what’s better?). Wednesday Addams with a monster of a septum piercing. David Toro with the sexiest dance moves. A pregnant, lesbian Alanis Morissette lookalike. A topless Jeffrey Wright type in costume jewelry. My once-upon-a-time fellow intern from VFiles; looking good . Susie Bubble. WOODY ALLEN.

Kinbaku rope bondage beneath a sleeveless blazer. Boy belly tops. Top-to-toe bottle print PJs, vintage Gianni. Cabaret Minnelli leotard and tights. Margiela! How many pairs of sweaty balls beneath how many pairs of leather pants? Safety pins, safety pins, safety pins. Huge pillow tits in Courtney Love grunge. Dance!

The air inside was sticky, smoky, and perfumed. Outside, it was neutral, perfect. Beyond the tented entrance, a black Nissan Altima was parked. Four dewy partygoers reunited there at half past midnight. “It was corny fo’ sho,” said the most outlandishly dressed John Waters whoa-man of the night, “I kept calling it a Zoolander event.” Bridge and tunnel kids making a mockery of a mockery. Four blocks south, a teenage boy tells me I’m “beautiful as fuck.”

Everything, everything, everything.
my heart.

The collection—it’s J.W., it’s fantastic. I’d buy it all if I got paid what Claire did playing those four songs. But—tap, tap, tap—I don’t. Instead, I took home two bags of complimentary doughnuts and a gold Medusa head safety pin. Beautiful as fuck.

!!!, forerunners in both the electro-disco-punk and the SEO-band-name-bedeviling explosions of the turn of the millennium, are back with a new album, THR!!!ER, which, you will likely not be surprised to hear, is chock-full (chk-full more like) of funk grooves and throwback disco party jams, like this one “One Girl/One Boy”, which you can watch below.

The song features vocals from Sonia Moore, who will not be on tour with the band, sadly. But you know what they say: when god closes one guest vocalist tour spot in the van, he opens a guest vocalist fan contest in the venue. For real, you can apply to sing with the band on stage. Weird! They explain more:

Upload a youtube video of you singing along or send an mp3 to singwithchk@gmail.com. No big deal, just you in front of the mirror singing into the hairbrush style will do. We’ll sift through the entries and holler at you if you’ve got what it takes. You’ll of course be judged on your vocal ability, but dance moves and star quality definitely help. If anything, it’s a free ticket for you and your bff for the show. No flakes, no egos, no drug problems.

PRO CHOPS A MUST. Working van probably not necessary.

Anyway, music is lame, so let’s look at what really matters in the video, the fashion.

Pictured here is a pair of shoes. What kind of shoes? Hard to say.

 Do you have nice legs? Too bad, put those stems away, fellas. No shorts on stage. Rock 101. Doesn’t matter if it’s 120 degrees in the club, you’re suffering for your fashion once again this year.

Scarves are a popular fashion accessory for the ladies this and the last few years. I do not care for this particular trend, but keep in mind I’m a pretty horrendously unfashionable old man.

Even the scarfiest ladies agree, wearing one while riding your novelty bicycle around town is dangerous. This is both a fashion and a health tip. Best life, best you.

People associate autumn with cozy feelings and fond memories of time gone by, such as youthful school exploits. Whenever possible try to project a water-color-like foliage onto your face so people will be tricked into liking you.

Tucked away in an East London council estate, just off Kingsland Road in Dalston, is the last place you’d expect to find the pristine, minimalist studio of up-and-coming Parisian designer Faustine Steinmetz. Standing in stark contrast to the building’s gritty exterior, her studio is light and welcoming. The room has a strictly black and white color palette punctuated by the occasional green plant or two. Two interns are busy weaving away on wooden looms that look fresh out of the 18^th century, surrounded by original fabric samples that have been affixed to the walls alongside stills from the French film La Haine, a set in the rough suburbs on the outskirts of Paris, similar to the one the designer grew up in. After a brief stint working for Jeremy Scott in LA, she moved to the UK to study fashion at London’s prestigious Central Saint Martin’s. In her newest collection, the young designer takes her inspiration from the iconic tracksuits, jeans, and Jansport backpacks that defined ’90s streetwear, but interprets it all with a certain illusory, loom-related twist all her own.

Was the main reason you moved from Paris to London to study fashion at Central St. Martin’s?
Actually I came to England to go to St. Martin’s because I went to Colette and I saw Mary Katrantzou’s work. I held the fabric in my hands and I still couldn’t tell if it was real or fake denim. I thought it was brilliant because obviously I’m quite fascinated by trompe-l’œil, but she also had clearly been coached very well and pushed in an amazing direction. That was 5 years ago, but she was doing exactly the same thing as me, except it was much better—and I thought, “I have to go to that college!”

What sort of work had you done in fashion prior to doing your Master’s at CSM?
Before that I had studied pattern-cutting and sewing in Paris, and then I interned in LA with Jeremy Scott. When I was there four of us had to share one bed in Melrose Place because it was so expensive! But we had an amazing time working on his collaboration with Adidas. After that I worked in Copenhagen for 4 months with Henrik Vibskov.

What sets you apart from other designers?
I’m trying to have an opinion about fashion. So basically here what I’ve done is take pieces that anyone can pretty much buy anywhere: a tracksuit, a Jansport backpack, Levi’s jeans, and each of these are just a pure reproduction of what everyone wears in the street, but they are completely made from scratch. It’s really interesting because all of those pieces represent what fashion is now. It’s not a craft anymore, it’s just made in a factory somewhere in China. And I thought it was really interesting to reproduce those pieces completely from scratch, and show what it would take to actually craft them and weave the fabric. It’s kind of this idea of tradition against industry.

What happens if you get much bigger and need to produce on a larger scale?
If I was lucky enough to get bigger and have a large company, I would love to continue doing what people have done in Paris for centuries. I want to keep the tradition alive and I’m really happy that the hand weaving mill is working and people like it. In Paris we are losing that tradition somehow. You’re always hearing rumors that all the fashion houses are closing their last factory in Paris.

Your lookbook is really distinctive with the wet, slicked back hair and the simple, lo-fi styling, very minimalist. What do you like about this aesthetic?
I was actually planning to style the lookbook even less! I like colors when they mean something. And the green in here, it’s the green of the plants, it means vegetation, it means outside on the inside, you know? But otherwise I don’t understand colors. What does blue stand for if it doesn’t stand for denim? Every piece of garment is a code. And the only thing that interests me about fashion is to play with those codes. And when you introduce color, if that doesn’t mean anything, to me it’s not important. I’m not even really interested in making nice clothes. I look at it as a painting, and I think, “what do I want to say through this piece?” It’s funny because I’ll send pictures of my work to my friends and family and they will say “Oh, that’s a pretty jacket!” and it really strikes me because I haven’t even thought about whether the jacket is pretty or not.

Do you have an ideal customer?
I really don’t think about that. I think I would be flattered if I saw someone wearing it, but I really don’t think of it when I design. And in school it was a problem for me, my teacher was like, “Who are you designing for? Others are designing for their friends, but you just do an art project!”

Photographer: Alexandra Leese; Assistants: David Mitchell and Curtis Ward; Stylist: Sharmadean Reid; Stylist’s Assistant: Char Roberts; Hair stylist: Alisha Dobson; Make up artist: Gina Blondell; Models : Portia – Storm, Junior – AMCK, Courtney-Studio BOYO, Corbyn – Studio BOYO, Nadia – Select, Muriel – Premier, Zaina – No agency. SPECIAL THANKS TO : Hertfordshire Super Bikes.

The magazine is made of titanium; the party, of tin foil. Still, the launch of Visionaire 63: FOREVER is as lavishly tricky to get into as if its cover model, this millennium’s Dorian Gray, were really there. No Kate Moss, I text a friend who’s asking for herself. Only Kate Upton? I squint harder. When every last surface is mirrored, it becomes almost impossible to see. Only a Kate Upton look-a-like.

In the long halls and tall staircases of the Clock Tower, below Canal, every person could pass for a famous person. This is partly the effect of a dress code: Whether guests dressed to match titanium or tinfoil, it all looks, in the halls, like a long series of Who Wore it Best? Metallics. (I’d give the gold to my friend, Visionaire and V designer Berkeley Poole, in borrowed Dior the color of a Nestle-egg wrapper, but the champagne-named Patricia Van Der Vliet has a very commendable Gwyneth-circa-Shakespeare-in-Love thing going on, too.)

It’s also the effect of the décor. Silver coats the place, from coat check to ceiling, bannister to the Belvedere and Chandon bar. In a silver room full of silver balloons, a flash photographer makes glossy interns feel like silver-screen queens. Next door, a silver machine makes silver confetti fly to the silver sky. A girl who looks like a blonde Leigh Lezark floats by, and later I realize it is a blonde Leigh Lezark. New York’s going Hollywood. Confetti lands like shrapnel in the gold of my glass. I cannot, when I climb more silvered stairs to the starry roof, shake the feeling that it’ll cut my feet.

FOREVER. An aureate staircase spirals to nowhere, and the room fills slowly to just below capacity, as all smart parties do. Smoke drifts in from the stone ledge. I’m taking iPhotos without flash, beguiled by the eternal poses of partiers: An interested woman whispering close to her conquest, silver being the best conductor of electricity; a girl leaning skinny-armed, hand on hip, near one of the guys from BFA. Nobody can dance to Sebastian Perrier. The Dutch models all move like mercury. There is an untarnishable cast to the whole tableau, as though we’re frozen, Moss-like, in titanium. But the next morning I want to Instagram something, and the photo seems to have greyed overnight, the accrual of silver turned to ash. There’s a scrap of tin foil in my bag, and no cigarettes.

Just like it says right up there in the headline, here’s a picture of Zooey Deschanel without her iconic bangs (by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images). Don’t ever say we don’t put the thing that the headline says in a post around here.

So what do you think of this new look she unveiled at the MET Gala the other day? It’s pretty disconcerting, right? Like seeing Spider-Man with his mask off, or Donald trump without his wig on straight, or me wearing pants. But after a minute, when the life-changing shock settles, it actually looks pretty nice, right? She’s a natural beauty. Dat forehead, as they say on the internet.

Suri Cruise, whose name you definitely recognize, and the details of whose life you’re probably more familiar with than all but your closest friends and family, is apparently launching a fashion line, as The Sun reports. It’s a £1.5million deal, their source says, which is, like, a lot of money, American-wise. $50 billion? Not sure how that whole thing works. Let’s take a closer look at this hot item:

The fashion-conscious schoolgirl, who regularly tops lists of most stylish celebrity child, will launch her first collection for young girls this autumn in a New York department store.

There are enough lists of the most stylish celebrity children published that she can be said to top them regularly.

A source said: “Suri is only seven but she is incredibly interested in clothes.

She’s also interested in poo poo jokes, you’d imagine, but we don’t see her launching her own line of toilets.

“She has been through a very difficult year and adapted amazingly to her new life in New York, including the upheaval of starting normal school.”

No she hasn’t.

“This is a nice hobby for her, it’s certainly not going to take over her life. Most girls dream of being able to make their own clothes, this just means her drawings will now become a reality.”

It probably won’t take over life, no, that’s a good point, especially since she will have literally nothing to do with it.

The initial idea was for Suri to have a fashion blog, but the concept was extended after she started to talk about special designs for her clothes.

How much worse could that have actually been than most fashion blogs, tbh.

Mother’s Day is this weekend, which means it’s time to honor that special breed of momma we all love to love, the MILF. MILFs get bad raps, conjuring up images of scary, plasticized cougars, underdressing, and overbearing. But being a MILF is really a time-honored tradition that, when done right, deserves our respect. We here at BULLETT want to celebrate the true MILF, a woman who is spectacularly ageless, perennially sexy and surprisingly cutting-edge in everything she does. The MILF who haunts the dreams of teenage boys isn’t defined by any stereotypes, she’s everything from rebellious and wild, to blonde and bubbly, but inexplicably never seems to age a day over eighteen. Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson.

In an industry in which e-mails from strangers are signed xx, in which Twitter beefs spawn over the semantics of a hot dog, in which interview subjects think that, “it was just fab-ulous,” is a considered response, and assessments of taste pass as critical discourse, in this starving blonde stereotype of an industry—fashion—Miles Aldridge is a man apart.

Photographer Miles Aldridge makes the glossiest images—his reds come hard like candy apples—for glossy magazines like Vogue Italia and America, Paradis, Numéro, Wallpaper, and V magazine. Aldridge likens himself to a 17th century painter artfully exercising his own agenda under a system of patronage. Gucci, Pucci, Prada, Sasha, Anja, Ruby—fashion is his medium and his method, but his subject are Eros and Thanatos, sex and death. A Stepford slaughters a birthday cake, a nude stares blank through a banquet of crustaceans, a head over a bed that’s either dead or mid petite mort; Aldridge edits fashion into memento mori.

A patriarchal auteur, Aldridge’s photographs have something of (his listed influences) the psychological daring of Hitchcock’s Psycho, the ego and ennui of Fellini’s more meta films, the cynicism and consumerism of Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, and the idealized nudity of the Old Masters. They have precedent in Guy Bourdin and Helmut Newton, a technicolor palette, like early experiments in color photography, and star today’s top models.

Last month, Rizzoli published a monograph collection of 270 of Miles Aldridge’s fashion photographs titled I Only Want You To Love Me. Last night, Aldridge launched a show, of same title and work, at the Steven Kasher Gallery in New York. In July, it will move to the Somerset House in London. The book and the shows prove that Miles Aldridge’s work is not limited to the binding of the periodicals it was commissioned for.

In an industry like his, it’s a revelation to hear Miles Aldridge talk; he likes to. And unlike many of his fellow patroned peers, Aldridge doesn’t deflect with an xx or air kiss. He’ll speak candidly, digressively, and philosophically, with ego and a British accent, about the “empire of fashion” and the “fucked world” of which he is a part. He talks so much and with such candor that, for the sake of clarity and propriety, we had to cut viciously from our interview transcript. Still, here it is, running long, but reading well, Miles Aldridge on the world:

Your book opens with a Bret Easton Ellis quote: “We buy balloons, we let them go.” Why Ellis? Why that quote?

I love Bret’s writing. Even just having the name Bret Easton Ellis at the start of my book sets up the reader for what is coming. I found this quote from American Psycho. In a very symbolic way, almost like a Japanese Haiku, it summarized some of the themes of the book in just seven words.

For me, the quote is about how we’re at this stage of human development where we love to covet things and own things. Often those things are bright and colorful, like  balloons. But also like balloons, these things we buy do not satisfy us and we let them go. It’s melancholic: we buy things to make ourselves look beautiful, to make ourselves feel like—as men, that we have bigger cocks than the other guy, or as women, that we’re more attractive than the woman next to us.

I’m always struck by how unhappy your models look. I just watched a Clarks advert that my friend is modeling in and she has this fake smile on the whole time. I can’t believe the face she’s making, I’ve never seen her make that face in real life, ever.

I could talk about that for a long time if you want, are you ready? 

I’m ready.

Photography is a medium of moments; that’s the way it works. But what I’m interested in are images that attempt to last forever. I’m interested in eternity in the way that the Mona Lisa is eternally looking back at us out of a picture frame. I don’t care what the Mona Lisa was doing before or after that image. Her image is eternally present, powerful, and effective, and that’s what I’m interested in: the power of an image to sustain the viewer and to ask questions of the viewer in an intelligent way. In that way, with my work, I’m much closer to the way the painting works. So your friend’s smile, like all smiles, is an attempt at a passing moment of happiness and therefore outside of what I am interested in. 

What’s the message that I’m trying to convey? I’m not saying, “I’m unhappy because I consume,” because I have all of these Gucci products or whatever. Humans are more complex than that. The message is that these women are thinking a lot about their lives. Some people look at my work and say, “oh the women are very blank.” Well, that’s true, but I think moments of apparent blankness—when we feel like we’re blank or when we look blank—are often due to the fact that we’re thinking intensely or deeply about our lives. These pictures in my book, they’re pictures of humans not mannequins. They’re troubled, wounded, and confused, questioning who they are now that they have everything they want.

I see that, but they are a certain type of woman. They’re the type of woman who would be—could be—buying the articles that are editorialized.

Right, that’s true. I guess my gaze, my radar is a middle class or upper class white woman. My work here is for fashion. What happened with my work was that, when I started, I had ideas they were quite aggressive, like car crashes, suicides, what I would call first degree statements; angry statements, ugly statements. This was before 9/11, and then 9/11 happened and it was—as a young photographer, trying to take pictures like that—it was the worst thing you could do. You just could not get hired. So I thought about it and I realized that, actually, there’s a way around this. What I can do is take beautiful pictures of beautiful women wearing beautiful stuff and it can be just that: the excess of luxury, the excess of consumer products, the excess of things that you can buy, own, covet. There can be a message in there that’s not quite like suicide or a car crash, but in another way it’s quite the same. 

I’m wondering how you see our contemporary moment. It’s hard to define when you’re actually in it, but what do you feel capable of doing now in 2013? Versus, say, September 2001?

I always include whatever I’m interested in, and that includes the Herald Tribune. We are in such a fucking weird place. So that’s always in my bloodstream: the messages from the news of carnage, trickery, and deceit, of brutality, stupidity, and greed; I mean, that’s just page one. 

I’ve talked about this parallel before but—Hitchcock’s great shower sequence from Psycho. Hitchcock said he wanted the audience to be confused by their feeling of being aroused sexually while watching a brutal murder. You’re there, in the audience, as a man, watching a woman being hacked up and, at the same time, hoping, possibly, that you might see a bit of her pussy or her breasts or her ass. It’s arousing and disgusting at the same time, and it calls into question your principles and morals. That’s what I’m after: finding that Hitchcockian balance between the disturbing and something that’s attractive.

I noticed there are often families and children in your photographs. That’s unusual and very affective. I was hoping you could talk about the presence of the family.

Well, I’m a father. I have three kids. Up until recently I was actually married, so I know quite a lot about that too. I was also a child of a divorced family myself, so I know quite a lot about that. My book is dedicated to my mother, who was a victim of divorce, meaning she never really picked herself back up after the divorce and died without having much of a life post-marriage. She kept her feelings private behind a mask, and as a young man I was always aware of this woman, and that’s the woman I create in my pictures: this woman, this mother, kind of like Bates in the Psycho hotel. It’s the mother figure who doesn’t speak. 

Fashion is the great mask. You feel like shit and you put on your high heels, your dress, you cover up, and off you go. You laugh your way through an evening of champagne and high jinks and frolics, but it’s still there underneath.

My family had a lot of secrets. My father had a secret family while he was married to my mom. They found out about his kids and then he didn’t marry that woman, he married this centerfold from Playboy. I guess I have quite a cynical view of things from that experience. But amongst all that there’s still love.

I was just reminded of something I heard Tom Ford say on the radio when he was doing publicity for A Single Man. He said that when he is the most depressed he puts on his best clothes. That that is when he looks like absolute perfection because he is in an armor. 

That’s interesting, I think that’s right. Although I’m not interested in men at all though.

How come?

Because I am a man and it’s really weird? I don’t know. I really don’t know. I don’t like looking at them in the way I like looking at women.

Well, you’re straight.

I am straight, there’s that. That probably is all it is. Not any deeper than that.

You have one plus-size model in your book. In one of the images she is pouring milk into her mouth. In another, she is by the toilet. I recently attended an exhibition by another fashion photographer and all of the few plus-size models in his show were also eating something. This is something I notice happens a lot: when we editorialize plus-size models we make the story about their being plus-size.

I wanted to shoot Felicity. I’m aware that my type of model that I photograph is a kind of version of my mother: very pale skin, very beautiful. There are no African-American women in my book. There are no Asian women in my book. There’s one large lady, so to speak. The rest are—well, they’re beauties. They’re a typical Western concept of beauty, which goes back to what I grew up with: my mother’s copies of Cosmopolitan.

When I got to a certain age, I realized that Cosmopolitan was far more interesting than my Spiderman comics. That new awareness of beauty coincided with my mom and dad throwing frying pans or plates at each other across the kitchen. So there are two aspects of women combined in my head: there’s the unhappiness, the tragic, and the angry with the endlessly beautiful, smiling, at peace. I didn’t set out to shoot a “fat” girl because I thought that would be funny. I was aware that Fellini had done some amazing images with large women and I thought that was something I could try.

Yeah, this model, Felicity, is a beauty. She’s still very much a beauty.

My work is not just about beauty, my work is about me, and how I feel about the world. The women in my pictures, they’re like the oil paint or the medium for this message. I use them to explain my message. By having a large person, somebody who’s outside of this typical demographic, then I start saying something about being a large person. Do you see my point? I’m not interested in saying that Felicity is questioning her largeness, I’m interested in the world.

Okay. So, for you, the fashion industry model type can stand in for some everywoman, some blank slate. Like the white whale of Moby Dick, we can project whatever or whoever we are onto it. 

I don’t feel it’s my place to be responsible. I don’t at all. I don’t feel it’s my job to kind of make everything nice and easy and say, “you know what, everyone’s equal.” They’re not, it’s bullshit.

You resent the call for an artist to be socially responsible?

Yeah. That’s a different type of work. I’m interested in how we live, the world we live in, what it means to be me. Which is important as an artist—we try to leave behind our story like the trace a snail leaves behind. I think there’s relevant justice in the world. This empire of fashion isn’t based on saving the planet or making people happy. It’s commerce and art. The world is fucked, what a mess. But I don’t feel responsible and I don’t want to change it.

It’d be nice if someone wanted to, you know? I work in the fashion industry and these are things I am hyperconscious of. I love your photographs. I’m not saying you should be socially responsible, I just think it would be nice to see more diversity.

My work is about how displaced, unhappy, and questioning people are about the world. And I think that’s a universal truth. That’s my truth. And I suppose, like I said earlier, being a man, my subject matter is rather attractive, classically beautiful girls. It’s the same shape that’s been used in the history of art for the past 300 years, mostly.

Oh, not true. There’s a little more body diversity there. It’s shifted. Our beauty ideal right now is pretty radically designed for the commerce of the fashion industry.

Oh god, yeah. The stick thin lollipop headed girls. It’s a bizarre creation. But it’s taken awhile to get there.

But symmetry and all of these things are as old as the history that we can write, you’re right.

I walk around museums just like you and I see great breasts all over the place. So we’ve always been obsessed by breasts and pussy and all that stuff.