Reference Library: LEGENDARY EDITORIAL: LA PORTFOLIO: L'UOMO VOGUE MAY JUNE 2006 BY STEVEN KLEIN

TI is obsessed with the June/July 2006 issue of L'Uomo Vogue

I was in LA the day the issue dropped in the US. I was just leaving Mauro's at Fred Segal's when my phone blurbled an incoming email from Jason Kanner at Major. I opened up the attachment and didn't breathe from 5 seconds. LA is very late on the Euro mags so it was only when I got back to NY that I finally had the issue in hand. It was epic. Inspired by the film "The Swimmer" this editorial was styled by Oliver Rizzo with hair by Paul Hanlon and make-up by Gina Brooke. And then there were 70 pages of Chad White in swim trunks which may sound like the most minimal of styling but the shoot came with a massive cast that were all impeccably dressed. There were cameos by the likes of Betsey Bloomingdale, Sandy Gallin, Daphne Guiness, Peggy Lipton, Marilyn Manson, Miss Prissy, Kimberly and Alana Stewart, Gore Vidal , Dita van Teese, and Tony Ward. As Chad White wanders around in very little (and sometimes nothing) through the hallucinatory LA landscape you marvel at how right Klein gets it. The subtext of LA is flawlessly decoded via the depiction of modern houses and the faux-English cottages, the cheap motels ...the obsessive landscaping..the primacy of the pools, the jacuzzi in a Beverly Hills Hotel suite...Chad White laying on the grimy sidewalk of what looks like lower Santa Monica Boulevard. The light in the images is just like that mesmerizing light in LA. New Yorkers in LA are often times a misfit breed but Klein really does a great job of describing the spooky energy of this dissipated city. I leaf through these images over and over again because in a way they have stopped being fashion and have started to become myth.

Double spread from the June/July 2006 L'Uomo Vogue: PH Steven Klein