Last Words

     

One photographer,  Annabel Mehran, decided to take the dark topic of suicide and turn into into a fashion spread for Vice Magazine. In the spread, Mehran captured the suicides of famous female authors, ie. Sylvia Plath, Virginia Wolff, Dorothy Parker, and more. Models portrayed these famous writers in the moments just before their famous suicides. Under each picture is what designer the model is wearing as well as the price. This well photographed spread has gotten a lot of heat, and not for no reason. Suicide is a very touchy topic that makes a lot of people uncomfortable.

The spread titled, “Last Words” was part of Vice Magazine’s 2013 Fiction Issue. At first Vice thought that they were celebrating the lives of authors that should have lived longer, but after the back lash the magazine published an apology giving their reasoning for the issue and apologizing to those offended. It was never the magazine’s intention to be offense, they just wanted to do something original.

My response to the fashion spread was filled with mixed emotions. The photos were beautiful and the clothes elegant… giving the images this romantic dreaminess.  Yet suicide, while romanticized in many movies and novels, is a dark emotional thing. I feel like the spread was not thinking about the families of the authors, who were forced to relive a traumatic incident of a loved one. In the fashion world, there tends to be a competition for who can be the most shocking or innovative. Fashion is all about capturing the eye and making people think twice about what they are seeing. Another fashion spread that had received some criticism in the past was Kate Moss’s spread for W Magazine, where she portrayed good in evil.

 Some found this spread to be mocking the church. Personally I wasn’t very offended by this spread. At least not as much as the vice spread. The thing about fashion, and any from of art, is that in order to evolve new and risky things must be tried, and sometimes it might just go a little over board.

Poppies in October

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.

Nor the woman in the ambulance

Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly –

A gift, a love gift

Utterly unasked for

By a sky

Palely and flamily

Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes

Dulled to a halt under bowlers.

Oh my God, what am I

That these late mouths should cry open

In a forest of frosts, in a dawn of cornflowers.

Sylvia Plath (27 October 1962)

Here is a link to the photos from the spread:

Link to the photos from the spread

–Ruby Aiyo