C Magazine [IG] is celebrating their 20th anniversary, with a memorable October 2025 issue. C Magazine by Jennifer Smith Hale has gifted us a spectacular cover story featuring supermodel Cindy Crawford, An Icon Reimaginied at Paramount Studios. [link to C Magazine].

Cindy expresses her rock-solid message to the ladies:

“I don’t want to tell women after a certain age we don’t deserve to be seen. It’s my responsibility to show up.”

Mathew Brookes [IG] shot this glamorous set of images at a historic place in films — the backstreets of Paramount Pictures Studios, Hollywood, California. Paul Cavaco styled the shoot with Chanel, Chloé, Dior, Gabriela Hearst, Givenchy, Loro Piana, Max Mara, Valentino and more./ Makeup by Pati Dubroff; hair by Peter Gray; movement direction by Will Loftis; set design by Michael Sturgeon

Brookes speaks so eloquently about Cindy’s presence, and AOC agrees. But we must rush to two more critical individuals, keys to the flood of enormously-creative, perfectly-executed, art-infused imagery behind these stellar photographs.

Meet Daniel Ralph Mfaya and Romeil Johnson

Beyoncé’s dancers Daniel Ralph Mfaya [IG] and Romeil Johnson [IG] are essential to the glory of these images. Anne and AOC have looked at similar poses for decades. It’s a sophisticated classic. I’ve never seen a rendering of this ‘winning’ movie imagery in musicals or fashion magazine photoshoots executed with such absolute conviction, personal awareness and photographic perfection.

Yes, the lens is very kind to this trio. And yet, they do not become artifice. Raw elegance and sensual beauty bear down on every image with searing yet soothing intention.

On Daniel Ralph’s IG, he writes:

I got the chance to spend a day with the Cindy Crawford, Timeless elegance, An unforgettable moment with the icon. Thank you for your kindness and grace by just watching I was learning something every minute on set !

Romeil Johnson shares his thoughts on his IG:

PINCH ME. I had the absolute pleasure of accompanying THEE @cindycrawford for C Magazines 20th ANNIVERSARY ISSUE. . . you’re a vision!!!!! It’s an honor to get to even witness you work this up close, let alone stand next to you. Forever an Icon, thank you for sharing your light.

The Light-Bearers Among Us

These images and comments remind me of the recent Pharrell Williams concert at the Vatican, where John Legend also appeared along with Virginia’s Voices of Fire gospel choir. Every artist involved in the ‘Grace for the World’ concert in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, co-directed by Pharrell and Andrea Bocelli, evoked such an emotional response in the crowd of 300,000 people.

This kind of beauty — from the Vatican to the lot of Paramount Studios in California — is heart-stopping in today’s cruel, almost crushing at times, American experience. With bulldozers tearing apart the peoples White House before our very eyes this week, creating images that remind me of September 11, 2001, this unexpected gift of impossible beauty lands from C Magazine to say “Don’t give up. Don’t lose faith in the collective us.”

It’s interesting that the ‘sharing of light’ becomes an expressed metaphor in this photoshoot with Johnson’s comments, as Pharrell led a crowd of 300,000 humans gathered in Rome in creating their own light show for humanity. This becomes the glue that binds like-minded people to look into the eyes of our fellow travelers in this spirit-infused journey of peace.

I am spent emotionally, just processing all that I’ve seen here. Thanks so much to everyone who produced this masterpiece. Some humans have such instincts for creating exquisite beauty, while others roll around in the mud unable to even see beauty when it confronts them. AOC specializes in the first category. ~ Anne