The Sophisticados

The Sophisticados
Copyright 2005 All Rights Reserved Andrew Richard
Fashion Photography in the past concentrated on sophistication or models who were sophisticated.

Todays fashion is baggy jeans, and sweatshirts. Put anyone in those clothes and they smell not of sophistication but of skateboards and the street. Gum chewing was at one time considered sophisticated, when people didnt have enough money for gum.

Todays bubble blowing bimbos and gum snapping sluts dont give that aura but are still used in fashion spreads, more often even than before.

Maybe I cant completely see through this evoloution to the lack of sophistication in todays models and fashion photography.

But I think I am getting the picture. Where once the fashion photographers used sophistication to bring in the viewer, we now shun this as eliteist and no one wants to be thought of as trying to be sophisticated.

They want the world to see the product as everyones product. Even girls who blow bubbles. Seeing a 40 year old woman was always common in advertisements from 1900-1950. By 1960 things had changed.
The problem I see is that its quite easy to shoot a 15 year old girl in baggy jeans blowing bubbles than it is to get a 40 ish woman or man to look sophisticated in the same scene.

Its really easy to do fashion photography if youre not shooting for sophistication. But its the sophistication of the industry that draws us all in. Somehow something went wrong and we got it all backwards.

I happen to be a proponent of the older model or actor. Though you may not have seen much of that work on my website, I have a bit.

Photography by Andrew Richard
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