French Vogue Grooms Its Youngest Models Yet
As we bid au revoir to French Vogue's controversial editor, Carine Roitfeld, let us spend a moment with the most controversial images from her final issue: kindergarteners in vampy lipstick and stilettos, languishing in bed and on a tiger-skin rug.
Roitfeld has been known to mockingly indulge the fashion industry's worst impulses. (See also: Plastic surgery erotica, "fat" model eating.) The spread, entitled "Cadeaux" (gifts), goes the full Pretty Baby.
Click on the images below to view the spread. Click here to view on one page.
When I first heard that Vogue Paris' December/January issue featured "children," I thought it was a reference to cover model Daphne Groeneveld, who is 16.
But then I saw the pictures! These are children-children. New York called them "6-year-olds," but I'm not sure if that's a fact or just an estimate.
They're not so young, though: Six years from now they could be walking international runways, like this girl, or be "fashion's favorite star," like Elle Fanning. This is perhaps related to the "complicated," "artful" message here.
I am of two minds on Vogue Paris' Toddlers in Tiaras edition. On one hand, it's straight out of the id of John Mark Carr, which is prima facie disgusting. On the other, Christianity Today has already named the images an "assault on little girls" (is that word really necessary?) and obviously I don't want to agree with them.
As a child, some lackadaisical guardian-of-a-friend allowed us to watch Pretty Baby, Brooke Shield's child prostitute movie, and the message I absorbed was, "I want makeup like that." (In retrospect: Were we being "groomed"?) So maybe these little girls will grow up to be bloggers.
Anyway! Youth and fashion: The inevitable conclusion. Good-bye, Carine. You will not be forgotten.