Model vs Actress - Who is 'on Vogue'?

Niki Taylor (below, in full 90's mode) has spoken out about the increasing numbers of fashion contracts & covers being swooped up be celebrities - mainly, actresses. When asked the question What changes in consciousness would you like to see in the fashion industry?", Niki replied to FutureClaw mag "Put models back on covers of magazines and in campaigns and let the movie stars do movies."

Niki was one of the supers back in the 90's. My favourite Niki Taylor shot is from UK Vogue (top of post). I had it on my wall circa 1992, she's wearing a Vivienne Westwood bustier outfit and is looking very Cindy C - people used to confuse the two of them. It's also great to see Cindy Crawford in the same mag! And to see the 90's supers featuring in the fashion glossies again - Amber Valetta, Kristin McMenamy, Naomi Campbell - and Kate Moss never left!

Niki sometimes modeled with her pretty younger sister, Krissy. Tragically, Krissy died in 1995, from an acute asthma attack stemming from cardiac arrhythmia.

6 Years later, Niki was involved a horrific car crash in 2001, resulting a coma for 6 weeks with injuries to her back, lungs and liver. It took 56 doctors to operate on her spine. This FutureClaw image is a nod to that surgery.
I can see where Niki's coming from - heavyweight fashions mags such as W, US Vogue and ELLE especially have been putting actresses on their covers for a long time now, and UK Vogue and ELLE has started to features actresses a lot more often, with Lily Allen, Demi Moore, Keira Knightly, Jennifer Aniston, Angelina Jolie, Carey Mulligan, Kate Hudson some of the latest, off the top of my head. And lately, it seems labels and fashion House campaigns feature actresses more often than not - Julianne Moore for Bulgari, Madonna and Scarlet Johannson for Dolce & Gabbana, Victoria Beckham and Sofia Coppola for Marc Jacobs, January Jones for Versace, Lily Allen for Chanel, Leighton Meester for Missoni...it goes on. Let actresses promote other products - like Scarlet's cool campaign for Moet & Chandon, below.

Personally, give me a model any day - we all know that 99% of actresses don't even choose their outfits, yet are lauded as fashion icons. It's duplicitous. At least, for the most part, models actually live and breath fashion, they have access to the best of the best and they innately style themselves to suit. Granted, they have the access to all of the labels - but they still don't need to pay a stylist to dress them in the morning. Look no further than at one of the most admired, imitated fashion icons of our generation for proof - Kate Moss. You can just see her pulling out a fur gilet and her Westwood boots after a night on the booze with the band.

Case in point - the Vogue UK edition with Emma Watson on the cover. A very wishy-washy, drab cover, yet inside is an A-Mazing Testino shoot, Star Girls- 'A Decade of Supermodels' - this Thread from The Fashionspot concurs. One of the model shots should have been the cover. I mean, just take a butcher's at these:

I understand that fashion houses think that getting celeb to front a line will bring in big bucks. But personally, I think let the models do their thing - actresses, stick to your own media!

It's only Rock & Roll, but I like it

I can't wait to see this Stones doco 'Stones in Exile', which has just premiered in Cannes. I've seen the Stones twice, once in Auckland in Western Springs in the late 90's, then again in London at Wembley Stadium. Both times they were AMAZING!



The music is fantastic & Mick is an absolutely electric performer, with his larger than life strutting and pouting. You can't keep your eyes off him, and Keith is painfully cool, with his well-practiced opening line "I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to be anywhere, really!" It always gets a laugh!





Filmed by the BBC, 'Stones in Exile' it follows the recording of their seminal album 'Exile on Main St' in the South of France during the year I was born, 1972. Back in their hey day, Mick, Keith & Brian Jones (below with Anita Pallenberg) were quite the triumvirate - the sexy swaggering lead singer, the naughty rock & roll rascal and the cute, sartorially slick dandy.

Mick

Keith

Brian & Anita

Like Kate Moss & Sienna Miller et al, the Stones 70's boho/rock looks has inspired stylistas & dedicated followers of fashion ever since. WAGs such as Marianne Faithful and Anita Pallenberg, then later Bianca Jagger and Jerry Hall epitomised 60 to 70's style.



Anita Pallenberg

Keith & Anita

With her 'Nico' style bangs, shearling coats and broad brimmed hat, Anita's effortless Boho style tinged with rock made her a style icon. The stunning Italian model/actress met the ill-fated Brian Jones in 1965 and infiltrated the band successfully, leaving her mark. Anita is credited for singing back up on 'Sympathy for the Devil', and Mick even asked for her advice on tracks from the 'Beggar's Banquet' album.





Anita later moved on to Keith Richards, with whom she has two adult children - Marlon and Dandelion. They had a third son who tragically died of cot death weeks after his birth. Their tumultuous relationship was the stuff of folklore, and Keith has still professed his love for Anita when he met his future wife, Patti Hansen.

Marianne and Anita

Marianne Faithfull



The wide-eyed, pretty blonde fledgling folk singer the Stones aged 19 at a party in swinging London in 1964 and quickly captured Mick's attention. Several of the Stone's best songs were said to be inspired by Mick's teenage girlfriend, Marianne Faithfull, including 'Sympathy for the Devil', 'Wild Horses' and Marianne herself penned 'Sister Morphine'.



One of the most famous Marianne stories is when the Stones were arrested at Keith's house Sussex, with Marianne clad in nothing but a fur rug. The stigma of this event still haunts her "It destroyed me. To be a male drug addict and to act like that is always enhancing and glamourising. A woman in that situation becomes a slut and a bad mother". She split with Mick in 1970. In 1979 she hit pay-dirt with her solo album, Broken English, with her beautiful song 'The Ballad of Lucy Jordan' going ballistic...



"The morning sun touched lightly on the eyes of Lucy Jordan

In a white suburban bedroom in a white suburban town

As she lay there 'neath the covers dreaming of a thousand lovers

Till the world turned to orange and the room went spinning round.

At the age of thirty-seven she realised she'd never

Ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair..."

Mick, Marianne, Anita & Keith

Much later, Kate Moss inevitably became pals with her style hero Marianne, but fell out in a widely publicised tiff with Marianne claiming in a rather vitriolic way "Kate Moss is a vampire who stole my style. 'Now I see pictures of her with a boy who looks like Mick Jagger, and her looking like me. So there was a reason. It's one of her gigs to do me". Eek! Here they all are in happier times.

Jo & Ronnie Wood, Marianne, Kate & Anita, circa 1990's

Bianca Jagger



An exotic beauty and friend of Andy Warhol, Bianca lived in a glittery New York life of parties, rock stars and Studio 54. This picture of her riding into Studio 54 on a white horse for her birthday in 1977 is one of my all-time favourite images.

The Nicaraguan beauty met Mick after a Stones gig in 1970 & they married a year in St Tropez later while she was pregnant with their daughter Jade. Wearing an immaculately tailored, plunging white Saville Row suit sans shirt instead of a wedding dress cemented her role as a style icon.



They divorced in 1978, after Bianca discovered Mick's affair with Jerry Hall.



Jerry Hall



The leggy 70's supermodel (far left, in this fabulous 1978 Helmut Newton shot for French Vogue) couldn't have been more different to the sultry Bianca - all long legs, blonde sunshiny hair & Texan twang, Jerry met Mick at a dinner party in 1977 when she was with rock-star & Roxy Music singer Brain Ferry - natch!

An affair ensued, with Mick writing one of my fave songs 'Miss You' (1978) about Jerry:



"I've been holding on so long

Sleeping all alone, And I miss you

I've been holding on so long

Sleeping all alone, I want to kiss you"



Bianca divorced Mick and he and Jerry were together through the late 70's and 80's, Jerry turning a blind eye to his alleged infidelities and marrying him in 1980.



They had 4 children but the marriage petered to a predictable end in 1999 when Mick was found to have got another woman, model Luciana Gimenez pregnant.



To me, Jerry epitomised the glam, 70's disco look with her wet-look lip lacquer, Helmut Newton shots and shimmery Halston dresses. This is another all time favourite image - again, at Studio 54, Jerry with Andy Warhol.





The Rolling Stones are STYLE. Even their progeny have inherited that innate style (and many a fabulous retro wardrobe) had their fair of modelling success - Lizzie and Georgia Jagger, Theodora Richards and Leah Wood.

Theodora in Cavalli for H&M, 2007

Theodora & Lizze in Nylon Magazine 2004

Georgia May's Madonna tribute shot in Vogue Russia shoot



But what better way to finish than with 'Keef' - still rocking his signature look & fronting the Louis Vuitton campaign in.

Return of the Gap

It's great to see quirky non-cookie cutter girls in the latest glossies,especially three young Lauren Hutton-esque smiles - Lara Stone, Jessica Hart & Georgia Jagger.



We love you Lauren.