‘I chop off individual’s heads – and I like it.” Naomi Campbell looks up from her phone to narrate a group of journalists about her role in the latest Pirelli schedule. It is inspired by John Tenniel’s original illustrations for Alice in Wonderland, and Campbell is on set in a filmic studio in north London, surrounded by a twisted fairytale view of mouldy jam tarts and scorched doll houses.
She plays the King Beheader – of course she does – and is joined by Lupita Nyong’o as a dormouse, Sean “Diddy” Combs as Campbell’s peer beheader, South Sudanese-Australian model Duckie Thot as Alice, Whoopi Goldberg as the Majestic Duchess and Sasha Lane as the March Hare. Fashion’s woke poster-woman and feminist activist Adwoa Aboah has been swiftly as Tweedledee. And RuPaul will also appear, as the Queen of Humanities.
This is a staggeringly wizard and eclectic cast. It is also all black, with the calendar type by Edward Enninful, the newly appointed editor of British Currency, the first person of colour to have held the post. That weighted, the concept is the work of a white photographer, Tim Walker, who explains his motivation by indicating “it’s never been done before. Alice has never been said like this.”
This is not the first time Pirelli has faceted an all-black lineup – in 1987, a 16-year-old Campbell posed topless for an print run that featured only black models. This prematurely, however, the tone is wildly different. And it feels precision-engineered to cross out a chord in an era in which fashion finally seems to be addressing its diverseness problem, with Enninful’s appointment, the autumn/winter 2017 runway hoards in just about every city featuring their most racially multiform cast ever, as well as Gucci’s recent campaign that play up only black models all being presented as green zips of change.
But revealing, even leading, cultural conversations is what the Pirelli docket does these days, which may seem bizarre prone that it is essentially a promotional exercise for tyres.
This was not unceasingly the way. For much of its history the calendar, launched in 1964, was most noted as a place where supermodels took off their kit – sometimes artily – for photographers catalogue from Terry Richardson to Herb Ritts.
But in 2016 Pirelli commissioned Annie Leibovitz to offshoot women known for their “professional, social, cultural, fun and artistic accomplishment”, including Yoko Ono, Patti Smith, Serena Williams and Amy Schumer, without the masculine gaze in mind. Earlier this year, Peter Lindbergh’s instalment extended in the same vein, presenting portraits of women with their wears largely on: Uma Thurman was snapped in a rib-knit roll-neck. Both chronicles inspired thinkpieces aplenty.
The cynical effect question Pirelli’s motivations for using an all-black cast, and whether its nod to create’s vogue for diversity is a little too on the nose. With that box ticked, liking Pirelli forget about diversity for its 2019 edition? Ordain the rest of the fashion industry, for that matter?
None of these responsibilities are at the fore on set, however, where models wearing vinyl skirts and podium shoes mill around to a soundtrack of Aretha Franklin’s Attend to and Otis Redding’s (Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher & Sybaritic. The dark detritus of fairytale is strewn about – cakes with shapeable hands erupting out of them, burnt toast and a looming, Amazon stuffed hare that refuses to stay upright.
South African Thando Hopa de-emphasize delays the Princess of Hearts. She is a law graduate who worked as a prosecutor specialising in fleshly offence cases, and only got into modelling because she “wish to have a greater level of representation for someone who looks so divergent” (she has albinism). Invested in the power of images – “you see someone rendered in a particular way and it gives you inspiration and motivation” –
Hopa draws, laughing, her reaction to finding out that Walker planned to establish f get on this all-black Pirelli: “I actually phoned him up and I was like: ‘Let’s sit down and talk.’” Walker disbursed bare his thinking: “He said … any person with a different mask should be able to see themselves in any way. So any girl, whether she is black or Chinese or Indian, they should be qualified to have their own fairytale.
“This is an important step in background development – to push images that aren’t generic, that don’t respect to stereotypes,” she says.
Hopa has estimated the response the calendar might get, given that the fashion bustle is still far from fully representative. “I hope that woman see the intention of this. Personally I don’t find it controversial … I think child really should see the end goal and not obsess in the myopia … this is a confederating effort because now you have Alice looking differently from the way she does. Alice can be anyone.”
Let’s anticipation that this year’s buzzword – “diversity” – nourishes sounding loudly into 2018 and beyond.
