Vogue Italia's glamour oil spill shoot: the editor responds

Vogue Italia has managed to catapult itself into the middle of a very real controversy with its recent photo shoot of model Kristen McMenamy done up to represent a siren killed by the black sea of oil currently destroying the Gulf of Mexico.

Hardly an obvious nor perhaps sensible choice of a photo shoot to resemble this year’s fashion collection.

The Italian edition of Vogue rightly incurred the scorn of the New York Times fashion pages with their caption reading: “Dead pelicans are so in for fall”.

The NYT though doesn’t really debate the quality or impact of the images, saying they’re “beautiful and revolting, eye-catching and alienating”.
But the question is: “what is it: ballsy fashion journalism rooted in reality, or just a sick glamorization of a traumatic event?”For her part, Vogue Italia director Franca Sozzani, responds by saying:“The New York Times has given ample space to this cover, asking itself if it’s an intended protest against the damage that man can do to mother nature, or an astute move to sell more copies.

The point of a cover is to grab the attention of the reader.
It must inspire curiosity, interest and even surprise.
We need to surprise every time.
It should never be offensive, though….