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Smoking! …
This signature 1979 Helmut Newton shot casts the 19-year-old gay supermodel Gia Carangi with Robin Osler, who leans over her like an elegantly lecherous lizard in Yves Saint Laurent’s Le Smoking tux.
Power dressing …
The mixture of domination and submission, Sapphic glamour and slick seediness is typical Newton. In his photography, fashion is always a prop in a sexual game.
Perfect illusion …
The shoot was greenlit by Francine Crescent, the radical editor of French Vogue keen to push what fashion photography was doing, while women’s magazines in Britain and the US remained buttoned up. Newton wanted to create images of crossdressing where the illusion was “as perfect as possible, to try to confuse the reader”.
Double take …
Even when they depicted empowered women, the question of who is in charge in Newton’s photos is intentionally ambiguous. Many were created for women’s magazines, but you can never escape the sense it has all been staged for a hetero male voyeur.
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