GIGI + BELLA HADID
When Erotic Fashion becomes Erotic ART
When it comes to taking beautiful photos, models-of-the-moment Gigi and Bella Hadid are two of the best in the game. They’ve often gone beyond the world of fashion modeling and given us images that blur the lines between fashion and erotic art. From Bella’s nude shots for Jacquemus to the sisters’ controversial British Vogue shoot, they certainly know how to take striking, beautiful photographs.
In January 2018, the sisters posed for dueling covers of a British Vogue issue. They each wore the same shiny Versace on their respective covers, which isn’t new territory for them or the fashion world. However, inside the issue appeared a black & white photo of the sisters, shot by world-renowned photographer Steven Meisel, that strangely caused quite the stir. The picture showed the sisters nude, seated, with their legs wrapped around each other in a close embrace – also a concept that isn’t new in the fashion world. Except that, for some reason, this particular photo seemed to get a marked rise out of people – which is funny considering that’s one of the fundamental goals of art itself.
Comments poured in after the photo was released on Instagram and Twitter, and the distaste was palpable. One user said, “I don’t like this trend of models posing naked when it is supposed to be about fashion, i.e. clothing!” First of all, that comment is laughable, considering that nudity has been an integral part of the fashion world since the beginning. It completely ignores the concept of fashion as art. If anything in that photo was provocative, it wasn’t the nudity (people still bothered by nudity are so boring). It was the incestuous undertones and awkward embrace. As another Twitter user hilariously put it: “They look like they would speak to you in riddles.”
Love it or hate it, that photo did its job – it made people react. That in itself is the core job of any piece of art: to make one think, respond, feel something. Whether that “something” is positive or negative, that’s not the subject’s job; it’s the viewer’s. What the subjects decide to do with their bodies – show them, hide them, whatever – is up to them, not us.
Gigi and Bella have done plenty of photoshoots that have veered towards the erotic side of fashion, both before and after the infamous British Vogue photo. In 2016, Gigi graced not one, but two Vogue Paris covers for the magazine’s March 2016 issue. Shot by Mert and Marcus, both cover photos featured her semi-nude, but one was racier than the other, showing her wearing nothing but a pair of slip-on heels. In April of this year, Bella starred in the first-ever fashion campaign shot via FaceTime (a brilliant stroke of quarantine genius) for French designer Simon Porte Jacquemus. The beautifully creative shoot featured Bella in varying degrees of nudity and in pieces from the designer’s Spring/Summer 2020 collection.
The Hadid sisters know how to take a good photo. If some of those photos feature them nude, however, awkwardly-posed, they may be, that’s their choice – and it’s your choice to gaze or look away. Art isn’t just here to please; it’s here to provoke. And in Gigi and Bella’s case? Mission accomplished.
