We love this Nikolay Biryukov Elle Ukraine Sept 2010 editorial of Charlotte for its keynote address of fashion’s new sensual elegance. The Carrie Bradshaw days spawned their own ladylike trend, but this one is different.

If the Sex and the City girls were all about shopping and consumerism, the new ladylike is more European, and not as grounded in superficial materialism. Note, we’re still selling clothes here.

Fall 2010 fashion editorials are grounded in classical references, with a brains, beauty and sensuality combo.  The clothes are almost secondary to the woman who wears them, representing a definite evolution beyond the Sex and the City vision of womanhood.

In the Modern values American vision of womanhood, clothes make the woman, rather than her soul. The new mood for Fall 2010 — one not necessarily captured in the American media — is what lives beneath the surface. The lens is far more European, than American.

The Eastern European photographers also possess a more classical reference point. What seems totally demode, is a Terry Richardson, pornified vision of women.

I don’t mean to suggest that nudity is gone from fashion. On the contrary, it is alive and well, if more discreet in a fall/winter season. With a tremendous enphasis on anti-religious fervor and pushing back against the global morality police, an integrated nudity will continue and probably escalate in editorials.

If the photography is more sophisticated, it’s because we see a major global push for women to integrate their sexuality into their total persona. This is a female-centric perspective and one gaining ground, as women try to take control of our own imaging, with large numbers of men supporting us.

The key point of these Nikolay Biryukov, Elle Ukraine Sept 2010 editorial of Charlotte photos — a direction duplicated is multiple Fall 2010 editorials —  is the sensuality ebbing beneath the surface. This expression of female sexuality is Smart Sensuality sophisticated, unAmerican and a distinctively European view of women.

If I reflect for a moment, I can make the argument that the US has led the way in the global pornification of women. The Internet helps women fight back, as we are doing at AOC, showing American women other views of femaleness, in other countries.

Based on our own web statistics, and endless private messages sent to me, I assure you that women and men are responding to this more international, unAmerican, contemporary view of what it means to be female. Anne