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(Lanvin's Spring/Summer fashion ad)
[Notice that the image on the right looks like a mirror image of that on the left (or vice versa)], but it isn't. I tried to do a mirror image match of the woman in pink with photoshop, but couldn't. And the light reflecting on the snake's head on the right isn't on the snake's head on the left.
Lanvin is literally taking us to the "other side," the alternate reality, where things look the same, but aren't.]
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Eve seems to be a recurring theme in fashion magazines (and fashion) these days. Recently, I blogged about the fashion house Blumarine, and its use of a female model in close association with a snake, from the snake skin attire that she was wearing to a strange conversion of her persona into that of a snake.
Lanvin seems to be on a zealous mission to bring Eve and the snake to the forefront, even more so than Blumarine. The March 2012 Vogue issue has a three-page Lanvin fashion ad where snakes are everywhere. Some (a few) are cleverly incorporated into the women's clothing and accessories, not as patterns nor their skin as the material for the clothing, but as sculpted three dimensional forms, almost alive in their sinewy presence. Most of the snakes, though, are crawling through the pages.
The writhing snakes are always in close proximity to a woman, and their relation to the males seems to be dictated by the women. For example, the complete version of the Eve/Snake shoots, available online here, has a sado-masochistic bondage scene. A man is lying down with his hand tied down with a snake while a woman threateningly brings a snake close to his face, as though to release the snake's poison on the man.
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Where the man is holding a snake, he seems to have less control over it. Some snakes wrap themselves around a man's wrist or arm, acting as handcuffs or ropes to tie him down. Others slither across men's bodies (shoulders, arms, legs).
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The women are sinewy and active, while the men are sitting or standing stiffly, like lifeless mannequins (a role reversal, since we are used to seeing female mannequins). And the men are often positioned lower than the women, reinforcing the female dominance.
The women's faces in all the photos are fully exposed. And despite their similar looks, with sleeked back hair (to resemble the snake), they still have distinct, strong personalities. The men have stunned expressions, and their hardened features are not as strong or as confident as the women's. In the image at the beginning of the post, the men are anonymous, their faces covered with masks to erase their identity and individuality.
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The women are not interested in seducing the men, despite their provocative, aggressively female dress and posture, but in subduing them.
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The sinewy, domineering women seem to have become snakes themselves. And having stunned the men into wooden passivity, they crawl all over them at their pleasure.
The snake has made woman his ultimate accomplice. And she has taken her complicity to the final level, where she is renouncing herself to become like, or be one with, the snake.
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The Lanvin ads, with their clever associations, have made woman the protagonist in their images. This is easy to accept since women are always dominant in fashion shoots, fashion is about women. In the imagination of fashion photography, and in women’s fashion fantasies, modern sex relations can resume where the Garden of Eden ended. Eve finally does take over.
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