What a wonderful editorial in the August 2009 edition of US Vanity Fair, recreating scenes from 1930s (ie: depression era) films. The movies shown here are They Shoot Horses Don’t They? (above), and below It Happened One Night, My Man Godfrey and Paper Moon.
This beautiful shoot entitled Paris Je T’aime from the 2007 Vogue September issue was photographed by Steven Meisel, and styled by Grace Coddington. The models are Coco Rocha, Guinevere Van Seenus, Caroline Trentini, Sasha Pivovarova, Gemma Ward and Agyness Deyn.
Grace Coddington is in fact Vogue’s Creative Director, and is in charge of most of the fashion shoots. If you’re interested in her (and the almighty Anna Wintour) and Vogue in general, then you might want to check out the new documentary, The September Issue:
I haven’t seen it yet, but reviews are good, and it sounds like Grace Coddington is as much the star as Anna Wintour herself. In the New York Times, the director R.J. Cutler said, “[Anna] is cool, [Grace] is warm and languid,” he said. “Anna is all about ‘next,’ and Grace is most interested in a historical perspective on art and fashion.” Sounds like our kind of lady!
Here’s a fun article on the subject over at Gawker: How Grace Coddington Stole The September Issue From Anna Wintour
Drop a comment if you’ve seen the documentary!
Care of Wiki:
Anna May Wong (January 3, 1905 – February 2, 1961) was an American actress, the first Chinese American movie star, and the first Asian American to become an international star. Her long and varied career spanned both silent and sound film, television, stage, and radio.
Born near the Chinatown neighborhood of Los Angeles to second-generation Chinese-American parents, Wong became infatuated with the movies and began acting in films at an early age. During the silent film era, she acted in The Toll of the Sea (1922), one of the first movies made in color and Douglas Fairbanks’ The Thief of Bagdad (1924). Wong became a fashion icon, and by 1924 had achieved international stardom.
Frustrated by the stereotypical supporting roles she reluctantly played in Hollywood, she left for Europe in the late 1920s, where she starred in several notable plays and films, among them Piccadilly (1929).
She spent the first half of the 1930s traveling between the United States and Europe for film and stage work. Wong was featured in films of the early sound era, such as Daughter of the Dragon (1931) and Daughter of Shanghai (1937), and with Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express (1932).
In 1935 Wong was dealt the most severe disappointment of her career, when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer refused to consider her for the leading role in its film version of Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth, choosing instead the European Luise Rainer to play the leading role in “yellowface”. Wong spent the next year touring China, visiting her family’s ancestral village and studying Chinese culture. In the late 1930s, she starred in several B movies for Paramount Pictures, portraying Chinese-Americans in a positive light. She paid less attention to her film career during World War II, when she devoted her time and money to helping the Chinese cause against Japan. Wong returned to the public eye in the 1950s in several television appearances as well as her own series in 1951, The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong, the first U.S. television show starring an Asian-American. She had been planning to return to film in Flower Drum Song when she died in 1961, at the age of only 56.
Set during the Great Depression, Public Enemies is the true story of FBI agent Melvin Purvis’s attempt to stop criminals John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and Pretty Boy Floyd. The film is an adaptation of Bryan Burrough’s non-fiction book Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933–34. Christian Bale plays FBI agent Purvis, Johnny Depp plays Dillinger, Marion Cotillard plays Dillinger’s girlfriend Billie Frechette, Channing Tatum plays Floyd and Giovanni Ribisi plays Alvin Karpis.
The film starts in 1933 and is essentially a gangster flick, so expect plenty of three-piece suits, fedoras, overcoats, double breasted jackets, leather gloves, and gangster chic. Looks to be a great flick for vintage car enthusiasts also, chase scenes, crashes and all.
Universal Pictures’ Public Enemies (2009)
Copyright © Universal Pictures. All Rights Reserved.
