|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Later during the shoot, a civilzed disagreement broke out over the styling. The photographer wanted real, I wanted Yamamoto. Typical fashion conflict. "Kitchen sink is so 90's!" I complained. "But that's what's cool about Bekah," countered Martha, the very willful photographer, "She's not some six foot stick girl from Planet Couture! She's a Real American Girl. She's healthy, she's normal, she's real. She lives in Upstate NY. Her Mom drives her to her shoots. I want to take a picture of her that looks like she's just hanging out in the town she grew up."
|
 Photo: Martha Carmillo | Stylist: Wayne Sterling |
| We're shooting
in a parking lot facing the Brooklyn Waterfront and it is coooold. Bekah
is wearing a cotton floral top and mohair skirt with white stockings and
Etonic sneakers. You know -- deliberately bad -- (stockings and sneakers-YUCK!).
An unkind wind is blowing tears from her eyes, ruining her mascara. The
make-up artist is beside himself. Polaroid after Polaroid, hair tweak after
hear tweak, something ain't working but poor Bekah stands patiently as she
is primped and pulled and pinned in the freezing cold. Plus she's already
running late for her next shoot. I feel so bad I lend her the Yamamoto cape
for warmth which she gratefully wraps it around her shoulders. She knows
how badly I wanted to use the fabulous cape. She looks out in the distance and kicks one foot in front of the other, posing but oh so subtly. The photographer cocks her head this way and that, "Wayne, look at what she's doing. That's the picture right there Wayne!" No doubt. That is fashion intelligence. |
| If this reads like a hype job then look at Bekah's Mario Sorrenti story in the November 99 issue of W. Bekah shot that story when she was 13. W wasn't going to run it because they were disturbed by the fact of her age. It was simply out of the question. It seemed irresponsible to put such a young girl out to the public as a fashionable object. Then the editors received the prints of the story and the assurance, the complicity this thirteen year old projected reversed their position. It was clear, they concluded, that this girl knows what she is doing. |  Photo: Martha Carmillo | Stylist: Wayne Sterling |
 |