“I am always stimulated by people. Almost never by ideas.”
—Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon’s 1992 photograph of Stephanie Seymour boldly lifting her Comme des Garçons dress has been widely published, first appearing in Egoïste (1992) and then in his retrospective monograph An Autobiography (1993). Seymour recalls the shoot, which took place during Avedon’s photography masterclass:
‘I did my first Vogue cover with [Avedon] when I was 18. But I really got to know him when I did a class for him. He was teaching a class about the fashion end of photography, and he had asked Christy Turlington to be his model for it, but she couldn’t do it. So then he asked Linda [Evangelista] … I was his third choice. But I was like, “Yes! Yes!” And that’s where that picture of me lifting up my dress comes from. There were actually 12 or 15 students watching as we took that picture.’
Presented in timeless monochrome against a minimalist backdrop, Seymour gazes directly at the camera, exuding confidence. Avedon’s eye for commanding sensuality and conveying the essence of his subjects, as exemplified here, challenged the conventions of fashion and editorial photography.