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Writing & research for graphic designers
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124
French luxury brands are not for the faint of heart. Their ad
campaigns can test the sensibility of those among us who are not
sexually aroused by the sight of action-figure goddesses in torn
fishnet stockings. In the last decade, as the result of an unholy
alliance between the couture world and the contemporary art scene
(thanks to French billionaire and collector Bernard Arnault,
chairman and CEO of LVMH), trollop chic and hard-core glamour
have become the mainstay of many upscale fashion magazines.
Luxury, once synonymous with opulence, has become a guerrilla
tactic against sanitized bourgeois values. French creative director
Thomas Lenthal can be credited for setting the standards for this
strange phenomenon. His 2001 campaign for Dior is nothing
short of a porn-hip manifesto.
An [alumnus] of French Glamour, a founding partner of
slick fashion magazine Numéro, and a seasoned freelance
advertising art director with clients like Cacharel, Tod’s,
and Kenzo, Lenthal had been hired by John Galliano, Dior’s
new sibyl, to “wake up sleeping beauty”— to turn the then-
sluggish couture brand into an avant-garde sensation. He
directed UK photographer Nick Knight to stage a series of
tableaux that looked, at first glance, like police pictures of
injured car crash survivors, their bruised bodies covered with
diesel fuel, their clothes a mess, the dazed expression on their
faces evidence of their bewildered state of mind. The women
in the photographs, swathed in skimpy yet extravagant togs,
sported strappy high-heel sandals and clutched pristine Dior
handbags.
The campaign put Dior on the map. “It was meant to be
outrageously contemporary,” says Lenthal. “Galliano had asked
CASE STUDY:
Thomas lenThal
:
The Deejay of Visual References
veronique vienne
Freelance author of more than a dozen books
(Originally published in Eye magazine #73, Autumn 2009)
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us to please, do burn down the house, so we did.” However, what
seemed to most an unnecessarily obscene proclamation on the
part of what had been until now a very boudoir-ish brand,
was in fact a superlative exercise in cultural referencing. “Art
directors and photographers communicate with each other by
sharing obscure visual references,” says Lenthal. He explains
how the history of photography, illustration, and film is a
common language between them. “For instance, I’d describe
to a photographer what I have in mind for the next shoot as a
cross between German lesbian erotic photographs of the 1930s
and 1970 drawings by fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez.”
Spread from Eye magazine #73
References do not have to be conspicuous to be effective.
The Spring 2001 Dior campaign, particularly gruesome in
the wake of the September 11 carnage, had originally delighted
cognoscenti who saw in it an astute visual citation of Week-End,
the surreal 1967 film by Jean-Luc Godard in which actors
are involved in a series of grisly car crashes. One of the most
famous scenes showed a burning wreck with an ironic subtitle
that read “My Hermès handbag!” If you were a film buff, as
many Frenchmen were and still are, the campaign was per-
ceived not as a gratuitously sadistic gesture, but as a very
funny insider’s joke.
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Writing & research for graphic designers
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124
French luxury brands are not for the faint of heart. Their ad
campaigns can test the sensibility of those among us who are not
sexually aroused by the sight of action-figure goddesses in torn
fishnet stockings. In the last decade, as the result of an unholy
alliance between the couture world and the contemporary art scene
(thanks to French billionaire and collector Bernard Arnault,
chairman and CEO of LVMH), trollop chic and hard-core glamour
have become the mainstay of many upscale fashion magazines.
Luxury, once synonymous with opulence, has become a guerrilla
tactic against sanitized bourgeois values. French creative director
Thomas Lenthal can be credited for setting the standards for this
strange phenomenon. His 2001 campaign for Dior is nothing
short of a porn-hip manifesto.
An [alumnus] of French Glamour, a founding partner of
slick fashion magazine Numéro, and a seasoned freelance
advertising art director with clients like Cacharel, Tod’s,
and Kenzo, Lenthal had been hired by John Galliano, Dior’s
new sibyl, to “wake up sleeping beauty”— to turn the then-
sluggish couture brand into an avant-garde sensation. He
directed UK photographer Nick Knight to stage a series of
tableaux that looked, at first glance, like police pictures of
injured car crash survivors, their bruised bodies covered with
diesel fuel, their clothes a mess, the dazed expression on their
faces evidence of their bewildered state of mind. The women
in the photographs, swathed in skimpy yet extravagant togs,
sported strappy high-heel sandals and clutched pristine Dior
handbags.
The campaign put Dior on the map. “It was meant to be
outrageously contemporary,” says Lenthal. “Galliano had asked
CASE STUDY:
Thomas lenThal
:
The Deejay of Visual References
veronique vienne
Freelance author of more than a dozen books
(Originally published in Eye magazine #73, Autumn 2009)
(Ray)
(Fogra 29_WF)Job:08-28858 Title:RP-Writing & Research for Graphic Designers
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us to please, do burn down the house, so we did.” However, what
seemed to most an unnecessarily obscene proclamation on the
part of what had been until now a very boudoir-ish brand,
was in fact a superlative exercise in cultural referencing. “Art
directors and photographers communicate with each other by
sharing obscure visual references,” says Lenthal. He explains
how the history of photography, illustration, and film is a
common language between them. “For instance, I’d describe
to a photographer what I have in mind for the next shoot as a
cross between German lesbian erotic photographs of the 1930s
and 1970 drawings by fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez.”
Spread from Eye magazine #73
References do not have to be conspicuous to be effective.
The Spring 2001 Dior campaign, particularly gruesome in
the wake of the September 11 carnage, had originally delighted
cognoscenti who saw in it an astute visual citation of Week-End,
the surreal 1967 film by Jean-Luc Godard in which actors
are involved in a series of grisly car crashes. One of the most
famous scenes showed a burning wreck with an ironic subtitle
that read “My Hermès handbag!” If you were a film buff, as
many Frenchmen were and still are, the campaign was per-
ceived not as a gratuitously sadistic gesture, but as a very
funny insider’s joke.
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Though highly stylized, none of Len-
thal’s most recent campaigns for luxury
brands manage to be quite as edgy as the
2001 Dior visual fender-bender. Clients
have grown more conservative these days.
Still, he draws from arcane sources, some
more obvious than others, to art-direct
images that resonate with the contem-
porary psyche. With Mario Sorrenti
(for Bally) he explores the world of
David Hockney; with Serge Leblon (for
Sonia Rykiel) he mixes Sonia Delaunay’s
pictorial sense with Alexey Brodovitch’s
cinematic editing; with Mert Alas and
Marcus Piggott (for YSL’s Opium) he
mocks naturalism, preferring instead the
meta-universe of plastic surgery; with
Sølve Sundsbø (for Yves Saint Laurent
Parfums) he takes off on Man Ray; with
Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Mata-
din (for Dior Joaillerie) he pays homage
to photographers Serge Lutens and Hiro.
His most intriguing [collaboration]
is probably with Juergen Teller, the new
enfant terrible of fashion photography
(Teller is the genius behind the provoca-
tive Marc Jacobs ad campaign featuring
candid shots of trendy celebrities). “With
less photo equipment than a German
tourist, Juergen takes pictures that are
incredibly lively,” says Lenthal. However,
referencing is a game Teller plays reluc-
tantly. Case in point: the campaign he
shot with Lenthal for Yves Saint Laurent,
Eye’s design is a neutral frame for the work being showcased.
“Put a short caption under a picture, and suddenly
it has a lot to say.”
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You started as an art director. Why did you switch to writing?
I wanted my byline on the page. Art directors don’t sign their work —
their name is buried on the masthead. Writers make a lot less money than
art directors (about one-tenth!), but they stand proudly behind their work.
How did you learn to write?
By reading John McPhee, Joan Didion, Mary McCarthy, Gustave
Flaubert — and Harper’s magazine.
How did you develop a writing style?
Being French was a serious handicap. To sound American, I had to
learn to write short sentences, with no more than one subordinate clause.
Also, I had to learn to put the subjects and the verbs in the front of my
sentences. In French, they trail at the end of sentences. Call it delayed
gratification. In my native language, the payoff comes last!
You write a lot about design. What triggers the subjects you
take on?
I wanted to share with colleagues and friends what I loved about the
field of design. It turned out that very few people I knew bothered to
read what I wrote. It’s always a surprise to find out that I have readers
out there.
Do you write for designers or for a mass audience?
Before writing about design (an elite activity, I admit), I wrote
first-person pieces for newspapers and magazines. I wrote short essays
about “French” topics: how to make a quiche, tie a scarf, kiss a man,
lose weight while eating bonbons, visit Paris, decorate a boudoir, cook
with butter, make an entrance, buy lingerie, have an affair — and age
gracefully. I wrote a bestseller called The Art of Doing Nothing. What
else do you expect from someone who comes from a country where
people enjoy seven-week paid vacations?
How do you distinguish, if at all, journalism from criticism?
Journalism is linear. Art criticism is an arc. It completes a circle.
What are your favorite themes?
I like to write about graphic design because no one knows what it is all
about. (I define graphic design as an assemblage of signs that makes one
feel intelligent.)
in which models on stilettos were dangerously propped on
ledges, high on the rooftops of the Paris Opéra Garnier. The
photographs spoof rather than celebrate the Cat on a Hot
Tin Roof motif. Charming parodies, they are unretouched
evidence that the age of irony may, at long last, have run
its course.
Likewise, Lenthal begins to show signs of being tired of
running circles around smart cultural references. In 2006,
he launched a stylish, soft-core magazine, Paradis, with two
separate French and English editions, to which he invites his
friends to contribute. There is no girlie centerfold, but the
magazine will typically feature a 60-page erotic portfolio by
Teller. It’s the old Playboy formula: photographs of pretty
women in various stages of undress are sandwiched in
between celebrity interviews (by famed critic Hans-Ulrich
Obrist), investigative pieces, behind-the-scenes reportages,
and visual essays by still-life photographers Erwan Frotin
and Guido Mocafico, with whom Lenthal collaborates on
Dior jewelry campaigns. The notable presence of still-life
photography in Paradis is a reflection of Lenthal’s growing
interest for less spectacular forms of provocation. Recently,
he is developing a growing interest [in] quaint 19th century
portraiture and black-and-white journalistic reportages.
As an art director, Lenthal runs his fashion campaigns
the same way a deejay runs a show, mixing and matching
visual codes as if they were samples or musical genres. Yet
as an editor, he finds that concentrating on one picture at a
time is just as stimulating. “Photography is an incredibly
potent medium,” he says. “Put a short caption under a
picture, and suddenly it has a lot to say.”
Veronique Vienne Talks about Her Handicaps
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