Vogue Hommes English Version 26

— His face was seen all over the walls of Paris as summer drew to a close. His eyes blue as lakes, a slender, straight nose, golden brown hair cut in a shoulder–length bob, and a disconcertingly androgynous look that is very much in vogue. Oliver Sonne, just seventeen, is astonishingly photogenic and already has the makings of a cover–boy. Vogue Hommes made no mistake in offering him his first cover, photographed by Inez & Vinoodh. "I have wonderful memories of the Parisian posters you mentioned,” he says. "They were for the Loewe campaign shot by Steven Meisel. It was a great honour for me to work with such a genius. It was Steven and Jonathan Anderson who discovered me.” Before that, on Christmas day 2016, Cesar Perin of the…

— This issue’s cover is Oliver Sonne, 17, a delicate, androgynous resonance of the young Joe Dallesandro, his black leather outer skin is bursting with the first flush of youth, the pellucid blue of his eyes pulsating with the blazing fire of youth. Youth and daring. Two inseparable words, clinging to each other, limpet–like. The gold standard of fashion, words that have had a sacred ring since the dawn of man. Cast your mind back. Which advertising campaigns are the most memorable, in any period? No contest: those that sell youth, or burn their transgressive message deep into the visual cortex. Remember those incendiary Calvin Klein ads in the declining Seventies? And Hedi Slimane in his Saint Laurent days, or Tom Ford dallying with classy soft porn? And, these days,…

— In December 1964, the prestigious New York Review of Books featured a vitriolic article by the critic and playwright Robert Brustein on Nothing Personal, a work by photographer Richard Avedon and writer James Baldwin. "One is obviously supposed to handle such a volume with unspeakable reverence, similar to that humility of spirit with which Charlton Heston held Cecil B. DeMille’s papier–maché commandments upon descending from his Hollywood Mount Sinai […]” in the biblical epic, The Ten Commandments. Brustein is disconcerted by the teaming up of the high–fashion photographer for Harper’s Bazaar and the African–American intellectual, who had become an emblematic spokesman for the civil rights movement, a tandem he felt was not trying to save the world but attempting rather "to capitalise commercially on an increasingly self–critical national atmosphere”.…

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Rare specimens — Why is it that, every season, you have to move heaven and earth to get your mitts on the perfect, original topcoat that suits you down to the ground? Once you’ve ticked off the classic number in navy blue or anthracite cashmere, the fall–back solution to sidestep a fashion faux pas, you have to acknowledge that a wearable coat with just the right amount of originality and eccentricity is pretty hard to come by. Nothing daunted, your editors have unearthed six miraculous specimens. In no particular order we found a loose–fitting take on the trench coat in coffee–coloured leather at Louis Vuitton; a camel neo–Loden with a shearling collar for student dandies at Gucci; a cleverly deconstructed canvas mac from Craig Green; a brilliant reinvention of the…

VOGUE HOMMES What did you know about Berluti before they approached you? HAIDER ACKERMANN The shoes, only the shoes. I also knew a bit about the story of Olga Berluti, who shod some of the world’s most intriguing, sexy, and eccentric men, from Andy Warhol, to Churchill, Saint Laurent, and Cocteau. She has always surrounded herself with beautiful souls. That was all I knew about Maison Berluti. Not a lot. Plus its reputation for know–how and craftsmanship… VH … and those fabulous patinas. HA No, I didn’t even know about those at that point. VH For a long time, you used to say that men’s fashions were not your subject. But you got involved gradually and finally launched a men’s line, and then that offer came along from Berluti. Was…