Pretty Pictures: Miami Spice

Those of you who know me well have probably heard me complain non-stop about the lack of holidays granted by employers in Canada, and the fact that this is the first time in several years that I haven’t taken a nice 3 week holiday during the month of August. This is definitely the worst part about living in Canada, the worst. In addition to our limited holiday allowance, there is also the fact that we’ve bought a new home, and so cash is tight and any spare time needs to be spent packing, moving, and unpacking. So my dreams of tropical beaches are unlikely to become a reality for at least another few months.

When I think beach photos, I think Mario Testino. And when I think Mario Testino, I think sexy, tanned Brazilian models on the beach. When I was living in Paris I used to share an apartment with one of Mario’s assistants (Alexi Lubomirski, now a well-known photographer) and was friends with the rest of his team. Mario and Carine (Roitfeld) were making waves at the time, because of their Gucci campaigns, but Mario was also known for his glamourous, sexy swimwear shoots featuring a slew of hot Brazilian girls. Alexi was constantly flying to Brazil to do sexy beach shoots with the top models of that time, Gisele, Ana Claudia, Mariana, Fernanda, and a few others. (Which was very depressing, because the both of us were on equally low salaries, but I was ordering zippers and designing diamante motifs at Sonia Rykiel, while he was partying in Sao Paolo.)

Another one of Mario’s assistants whom I was friendly with was Huw Gwyther, now Editor and Founder of Wonderland magazine. He once showed me some pre- and post-retouched photos of a shoot they had done, (the pre-retouch made me feel happy, models are far from perfect!) and he explained to me why it was that Mario’s work was getting so much praise. Mario had a team of retouchers who used to work by hand to perfect all the photos. They wore giant magnifying glasses over their eyes, and painted with one-hair paintbrushes to make sure the girls in the photos looked perfect. I’m sure that this can be better done with Photoshop now, but this was 12 years ago, and at that time, Mario was one of the photographers who was coming out with the most polished images. His secret retouching team was the reason why.

I found this shoot on Bytemodels, which features Ana Claudia Michels and Mariana Weickert, and it is a great example of the types of shoots Mario was doing at the time. It is from British Vogue, the May 2000 issue. Geez, I need a holiday.