VIVE LA FRANCE

Lena Simonne changes her position on the chair, letting her wrists rest over her folded knees and fixating her serious blue eyes on the camera. Behind it stands photographer Gilles Bensimon, wearing jeans and a cashmere sweater over a light blue shirt. The 24-year-old French model is styled in high boots and lingerie in black lace. The scene takes place in a spacious photo studio a stone’s throw away from the Canal Saint Martin in Paris’ trendy 10th arrondissement, and from the speakers you hear the tones of Verdi’s opera Traviata.

Gilles is great,” Simmone tells me following the cover shoot for “I felt so inspired by him and he made me relax. I really like doing shoots for magazines. Then I can improvise more and be closer to myself; I get