Italian Vogue’s Kristen McMenamy oil-spill environmental disaster photos have created a firestorm of controversy about the motives of the magazine and whether or not the fashion shoot is in ‘poor taste’.

I’ve read endless comments from presumably American readers, and they are generally negative about the Italian Vogue Sept 2010 BP oil spill photos.

Comments are that the photos are tasteless, trivialize the events in the gulf to the point of mockery and represent a big-businesses attempt to exploit the tragedy. In the case of Italian Vogue and Kristen McMenamy, the big-business bad guy is Conde Nast, not BP.

From my perspective, I fail to see how these photos glamorize the BP Gulf oil disaster. They are disturbing, provocative and dreadfully ugly.

What we learn in reading the torrent of comment criticism is a fashion reality long known to me: American fashion has no intellectual or political base. In France and Italy, fashion and style become political, holistic statements about life and consumption.

The Politics of Fashion

On Thursday I met with a prominent New York PR woman, talking about Anne of Carversville and my consulting philosophy. Luckily she has global clients and was herself raised in Australia.

“They must love you in France,” she laughed.

This is true, not only do ‘they’ love me in France and Italy, ‘they’ say I’m not American, precisely because I don’t separate fashion and style from environmental, or quality of life issues. “You may have an American passport and work for an American company (Victoria’s Secret), but you are not American,” they said for 10 years. (Note: people said the same thing in Asia. )

Humans As Animals

There is no beauty in the Italian Vogue editorial photos. Honestly, I can’t imagine that they will inspire one dress sale. I view the photos as a primarily political statement, one tied into environmental issues but also into the fact that as humans, we are animals.

Modern values, which were born in America, put humans above animals and Mother Nature. We forget that humans are technically apes. We exist in this lineup: bonobo, chimpanzee, human, gorilla, orangutan, and gibbon.

If we regarded ourselves as part of Mother Nature’s lineup, rather than masters over it, we might approach our lordship over the environment differently.

It’s helpful to examine the Italian Vogue oil spill photos against the backdrop of the ongoing Wrangler jeans ‘We Are Animals’ ad campaign. Can you imagine this campaign being produced in America? No.

Culture Creative Advertising

Americans could be pleasantly surprised to get a first-hand visual documentation of just how intellectual fashion can be in Europe vs America.

Instead we shred the Italian Vogue visual commentary, taking offense at its lack of political correctness. We could explore what we can learn from the European desire to integrate consumption and brand values messages into a cohesive editorial statement. But that requires an intellectual, thoughtful approach to fashion and our consumption patterns.

No dice.

Simply stated, not since the 60s (which is the birth of Cultural Creative values) has America used fashion and style to make political statements.

The American response to Italian Vogue’s Gulf Oil spill, Kristen McMenamy photos is one more example of a schism wider than the Atlantic Ocean that separates Europe and America, when the topic is fashion and politics. Anne