Cover Girl – the girls of the magazines at Les Galeries Lafayette
When art, fashion, trade, beauty and society are mixed. A little flashback on the codes to better understand today’s fantasies and yokes.
The theme of the Cover Girl exhibition at La Galerie des Galeries (Les Galeries Lafayette) is fashion photography from the angle of contemporary art between the 60’s and today.
Indeed, fashion photography has redefined feminine beauty through advertisement and fashion magazines. The pieces exposed here are photographs or paintings directly inspired from fashion photography, or turning it away to provide input for a social or political speech, or considering it as mere grounds for creation.
The exhibition also reserves small room to presenting a selection of previously unreleased covers of Les Galeries Lafayette magazines from 1906 to 1968, and this is what BrandMemory is directly interested in, of course.
Poetry and geometry of the 20’s
Freshness and cheerfulness of the 30’s
Why add this, what is more concerning the era before the one of the exhibited works? It may be a sort of confession, to show how Les Galeries Lafayette contributed to the construction of the myth of the beautiful woman. Les Galeries Lafayette called on different celebrities for them to be the artistic director of their communication. Some of these celebrities marked their time, like Georges Lepape in the 10’s or Peter Knapp in the 50’s. This is actually still the case today with Jean-Paul Goude.
These Cover Girls are therefore the testimony of Les Galeries Lafayette participation in the Art/Ad mix, Artistic Director/Creator (the mix of creation and trade) but also the Beauty/social criteria mix, which women are facing today.
?Smile and propriety of the woman of the 60’s
JUntil March the 19th, 2011
At La Galerie des Galeries
1st floor of Les Galeries Lafayette
Photos SB
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