Nadua Araujo & Wolves by Richard Phibbs for Town and Country UK Winter 2020
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Nadua Araujo & Wolves by Richard Phibbs for Town and Country UK Winter 2020
London-bred model Nadia Araujo is styled by Miranda Almond in ‘Ray of Light’, lensed by Richard Phibbs (IG) for Town and Country UK Winter 2020./ Hair by Bjorn; makeup by Emma Miles (Note: spend 60 seconds on Richard Phibbs’ Instagram and you will see that he is deeply devoted to animal welfare.)
The fashion story channels women and wolves imagery, writing: “As sunshine streams through the treetops, a fairy-tale heroine, clad in show-white gowns, wanders across the forest with her company of wolves.”
In any overview of wolf symbolism, certain consistencies prevail. Wolf symbolism is associated with sharp intelligence and deeply instinctual understandings of life and its elements. An appetite for freedom is strongly associated with wolves, symbolism illuminated in the classic 1992 book by Clarissa Pinkola Estés ‘Women who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype.”
Literature written about man’s relationship with wolves seems to center around his slaughter of the animal as a symbol of Western civilization’s triumph over nature. In Western children’s stories, the wolf is big and bad — ready to devour Walt Disney’s ‘Three Little Pigs’.
Better yet, in ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, our young girl on her way to grandmother’s house meets the wolf, shares her intention and destination, only to be devoured upon her arrival by the wolf, who has already gobbled up grandma.
In Charles Perrault's version of the story (the first version to be published), Little Red tale ends here. Subsequently, a woodcutter emerges in the French version, and a hunter in the Brothers Grimm and traditional Germanic versions. Both grandma and Little Red Riding Hood are cut out of the wolf’s stomach, replaced with stones, and it’s all downhill from there. Man saves Red and grandma.
