So I’m offline for one weekend and what happens: Charlotte Casiraghi gets the cover of Vogue Paris “fashion month” September issue. I’m pretty surprised I must say. Even though Princess Caroline of Hannover/Monaco’s daughter started acting more and more in the spotlight and had pictures taken for magazines lately, the very media shy and protective behaviour of her teens, when she fought several legal causes against tabloid magazines, had been prevailing in my mind. Therefore I take this as a well considered step forwards, and expect to see a lot more of her, soon.
Not really surprisingly it was all European royalty’s favourite Mario Testino, who photographed her for the spread. I remember his famous pictures of Lady Diana, William and Kate’s wedding pix, an editorial of Princess Caroline, as well as a whole issue of Vanity Fair dedicated to Royal Families and taken by Testino. But to be fair, Mario has often been seen with Charlotte at parties, she probably felt the necessary comfort when working with a friend, and didn’t only rely on Testino’s prior experiences as courtly photographer.
The editorial as an editorial isn’t exactly overwhelming, but totally lives from Charlotte’s breathtaking beauty. The same can be said about Charlotte’s model abilities, but in the end this doesn’t really matter, because the purpose of this sort of celebrity photo shoot is in my opinion simply different from a regular one. While usually a photographer/stylist/editor thinks of a theme and then builds a story composed by the model, styling, scene etc. around it, Testino’s pictures of royals are simply meant to portray the person in question. And also this time we see Charlotte in beautiful gowns reminding us of her royal origin, as a very natural country girl, party animal in minidresses, with one of her dogs, and of course as the passionate rider she is said to be. To keep it short: Chanel jacket and jeans hot pants. A few pictures seem to link back to her grandmother Grace Kelly, while in most of them as least I see a striking resemblance with her mother, a lot more than I usually do. But frankly speaking Testino’s portraits always carry a bit (or more) of boringness with them, at least for my taste.
In the end I can say that I really like this, at least a lot more than any earlier picture Testino has taken of Charlotte or other celebrities. I don’t think we could have expected Charlotte to do an edgy or provoking editorial. I still don’t believe that she’s further pursuing a career in modelling, but rather wants to make her own way into the fashion world, after she had already gathered some experiences as a journalist and magazine editor. So even though she stood on the safe side, her beauty renders those pictures to something catchy, you just can’t easily take your eyes away from. I especially like the cover picture and those of her profile, but rather despise any of her “acting” somehow, like funny, attempts. The black-and-white pictures are gorgeous as well! Just one big shame: in some of the profile shoots her nose seems to be seriously photoshopped – how could they do that to THIS face??! Oh, and I really like her heavy – somewhat vintage - eye makeup, didn’t think this would work so well on her!
Last but not least I must say that I find Emanuelle Alt’s choice, to put a socialite instead of a model – with a celebrity instead of a high fashion editorial - onto her first September cover, a little odd. But of course his doesn’t lower Testino’s work! What else can I say? I am definitely going to try to get this!
You can find the whole editorial on the fashionspot here and here. All pictures on this page are from storemags.com. All rights belong to Vogue Paris.
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