The image of the American model Guinevere van Seenus holding up a strip of pink wallpaper – hair pulled back, make-up pared back, gazing somewhere to the right of the camera, seemingly lost in thought – is one of the defining fashion images of the Nineties. The irony, of course, being that the photograph contains no clothes. Trumping attitude over attire, this image formed part of the Jil Sander Spring/Summer 1996 campaign, but it did more than that: it captured the spirit of the time, eschewing the glamour and excess of the Eighties in favour of something cleaner, leaner, but also more human. It was a breath of fresh air.
That image, as powerful now as it was back then, was the result of a longstanding collaboration between the French art director Marc Ascoli and the English photographer Craig McDean, who have enjoyed a fruitful relationship for the past 25 years. Having first met in the early Nineties, the pair have produced a steady stream of striking imagery that includes campaigns not only for Jil Sander but also Martine Sitbon and Chloé for two seasons during Phoebe Philo’s tenure, as well as covers and fashion stories for AnOther Magazine and W.
Born in Tunis, Ascoli arrived in Paris in the Seventies, when he was still a teenager, and was immediately struck by the fashion of the city –
