Can Kate Upton Make Sensual Women Desirable Again in a Fickle Fashion Industry

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Entire Editorial: Kate Upton | Steven Meisel | Vogue Italia November 2012 | ‘Miss Kate Upton’ AOC Private Studio

Miss Kate Upton

One wonders if Victoria’s Secret now takes itself so seriously that it will go against Anna Wintour, who profiled Kate Upton with images in the June issue and gave her an editorial ‘The New Girl’ in November; Carine Roitfeld who used Kate lavishly in the launch issue of CR Fashionbook; and now Vogue Italia who put Kate in front of Steven Meisel, who left no doubt that she has the potential to be the 21st century bombshell of bombshells.

Meisel also confirms that Terry Richardson is a pathetic photographer of beautiful women, but I digress. Kate should refuse to have Richardson photograph her and stay with Meisel — who also photographed her for Wintour’s Vogue — or a host of other image makers who have captured Kate’s beauty and innate sensuality without making her look cheap.

Roitfeld, the French former Paris Vogue editor-in-chief told The Daily Beast: ‘I didn’t want a normal model. I wanted someone with a sensual body, someone who could be a mother for all these babies… I would not say she’s a controversial model, but she’s not a classic model. And I like that.’

Writing about Kate with a single word ‘Seductive’, Vogue Italia reminds us that sensuality is not only a question of silhouette: it is written in one’s way of being, the way one moves, the way one expresses oneself.

Kate Upton has an “explosive femininity” that the fashion industry sniff its nose at. Ever since the industry moved away from the 80’s/90’s size 4-6 supermodels and dismissed sensual women as being undesirable as models, girls like Kate are the industry’s definition of sluts.

Let them sniff. But Victoria’s Secret is on the wrong side of the Kate Upton debate in not using her. I’ve taken this position from day 1, and I’m in seriously good company in thinking as I do. ~ Anne

More reading: VS Stylist Says Kate Upton Is Too Fat, Anja Rubik Is Perfect? AOC Body

Gisele Was Shunned, Too

Take heart, Kate Upton. Mario Testino explains that nobody wanted Gisele Bündchen either. “C’est impossible!!!

In a long interview with The Observer, Mario Testino explains that it was impossible to place the world’s top-earning model in the beginning.

“Nobody liked her, nobody wanted her,” he says. “I had to fight to get her into my stories because nobody thought she was right – too this, too that, the nose, the breasts, the waist. But I believe in being obsessed, in getting obsessed.”

Testino refused to give up on Gisele and is generally credited with raising her to supermodel status.

Mario Testino @
Museum of Fine Arts Boston

Oct. 21-Feb.3, 2013

“In Your Face” offers a provocative inside look at some of today’s most elusive and exclusive subjects through the lens of renowned fashion and portrait photographer and Vogue and Vanity Fair contributor Mario Testino. Known for the elegance, beauty, style, irreverence, and contradiction of his images, Testino gives us a career retrospective arranged in compelling visual stories. These images capture the interplay of mass media, celebrity, and glamour, and offer a new understanding of his influence and aesthetic contributions to fashion and photography.