Read the story behind the shoot here.

Maybe I’m getting older. The kind of age where a crafted review of shaving cream can really appeal to me. Whats missing from local mags is normally just plain good f*cking writing. This week I picked up a copy of Fantastic Man from Church in Speakers Corner. Besides the interview of one my favourite bands, Hot Chip, which first caught me, they also feature quirky lists like “Summer Plans – A Census of the Summertime Intentions and Plans of Gentlemen from around the World’. A pretentious but obviously wry poke on the readers view of themselves.

The magazine layout is beautiful and traditional. Stacked columns, straight laced Fonts and center-aligned headings printed dutifully on recycled paper. It reminds me of the private school tuition that I never had. I like their take on Masculinity. Their images define style more as an open ended morphing of colors, trends, cuts and personalities. A view that’s perhaps a hard sell in a country which has to remind itself to wear a collared shirt out to Tiger Tiger every Thursday night. Rather than epitomizing style as a manicured newly minted suit, there’s a knowing Old Money hidden between the pages. The kind of Old Money which maybe at times has no money. The choice of images flow with the writing, featuring subtle and thought-out photography. This issue had a fashion editorial for the ‘fuller figured’ man.

The Journalist Bob Colacello

Interview with Alexis Taylor from Hot Chip

Fashion Editorial for "men of quite Marvellous Shape"

Vacation 4. Malibu. Photography by Jeff Burton

I don’t sleep the night after the meeting. The 6mg of Melatonin sleeping tablets from Wellness Warehouse doesn’t kick in between 2am and 4am. It’s impossible to come up with an idea, a treatment, a location, do a casting and source the clothes for 8 DPS’s and 8 ‘looks’ by next Thursday. I’m pouring my soul into this. My girlfriend will witness the effects of this stress in later weeks when she discovers me sleepwalking around the holiday house ‘looking for shapes’. In the morning I start location scouting. Scouting is less fun than it sounds. I’m in the trokkie, I’m up the mountain, I’m talking, I’m phoning, I’m mobile googling, I’m sweating. By 4pm I find MacSteel in Belville. I can tell no location scouts or photographers have even stepped foot in this part of Industria. I’m charming the secretaries with my glam fashion industry stories. MacSteel is a shape paradise. Piles of steel wrapped in hexagons. Rolled aluminum stacked to the roof ready for pressing in to pixels.

It’s 10am on day one. Our Argentinian model Estefania clicks into automation. She’s good. She laughs at my pose stetches. “They’re so cute”. Giggle giggle. She’s standing between 9 foot plates of raw steel while a curious crane loader hovers overhead like a bot from The Matrix. Mirage, the MacSteel stock manager, sticks to my side throughout. Fashion photography is much more interesting than loading pipes. Mirage strikes me as the the type of employee the company can’t live without but will never be promoted. He’s wedged himself under an industry machine and he’ll prop it up for the next 50 years. The factory workers mingle around the set during breaks. Between poses I hear “yeah, that’s sexxeeee” in that cheeky South Belville drawl.

Here’s the gallery of images from the shoot.

Some behind the scenes shots were taken by my Assist, Renier Botha:

On the Factory Floor

Our Audience of Steelworkers

The Curious Hovering Bot

Fashion Editor Giselle making sure

But I do stare. Not because I’m mesmerized, but because I’m trying to work out what they would look like with different make-up and completely different lighting and styling. I’m trying to imagine how they would look through a 24-70mm f2.8 lens with a 5-foot Profoto Octobox camera right with double diffusion. And not just models, I often find myself analyzing people’s faces when I see them on the street, driving in cars, buying a movie ticket. I try to be subtle about it, but often people catch my eye. It’s amazing how your notion of beauty changes when you really start analyzing the structure of a face, and also once you understand what you can do with a face in a shoot.

Studies have revealed that a strong indicator of physical beauty is actually averageness. A hundred years ago, a scientist cousin of Charles Darwin first noticed this when creating photographic composites of faces. He found that while a single face could be ordinary looking, if you overlay more faces, the composite of the faces together becomes distinctly more attractive. In fact, as more faces are overlaid, the composite face becomes closer and closer to the “ideal” image of beauty. The image at the top of the page shows an example. Starting with an ordinary face, the composite is transformed into a ideally beautiful face as more faces are added. The face becomes a beautiful average.

So I guess this means that it’s a compliment if somebody tells you that you’re really average-looking?

The movie was an interesting insight into a world that’s seems to be more about image design that about fashion design. I find myself drawn to that kind of world, not so much because of the clothing, but because of the way it celebrates and harbors photographic talent. The film shows some behind the scenes footage of shoots with celebrity photographers Mario Testino and David Sims, and how they are close collaborators with the Magazine in editing and fabricating fashion’s international glamour culture.

Film was directed by R.J. Cutler and below is a trailer from the film.