Fashion Eye Paris by Melvin Sokolsky

In December 1962, Harper’s Bazaar commissioned Melvin Sokolsky to photograph the spring collections in Paris. He already had an idea in mind: the models would float around in a transparent sphere, defying gravity. This display of ingenuity drew awestruck reactions from passing Parisians, who are included in the images, with a nod to street photography. Two years after Bubble, the Fly series dispensed with the sphere, allowing the models to take flight and revealing how the female body lends structure and drape to the clothes. These two aerial fantasies, iconic already in their time and more generally in the history of fashion photography, are brought together in this volume for the first time in both their black and white and colour versions. A self-taught photographer, Melvin Sokolsky was born in New York in 1933 and raised on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Around 1959, Henry Wolf, art director at Harper’s Bazaar, wanted to give the magazine a more contemporary spirit, and welcomed a number of emerging photographers, including Sokolsky. Sokolsky played with scale, innovated with body language, jumped into the frame, offered daring contrasts between narratives and models, conceived impossible props, discovered new faces and propelled them into the limelight. His gaze provided a force that shaped the zeitgeist. Inspired by the House's travel heritage, the Louis Vuitton Fashion Eye collection evokes cities, regions or countries through the eyes of fashion photographers, from emerging talents to industry legends. Each title in the series features an extensive selection of large-format photographs, together with biographical information and an interview with the photographer or a critical essay. After Louis Vuitton City Guides and Travel Books, this third collection presents travel photography with a fashion perspective, as the chosen photographers all infuse their images of great cities, faraway places or dream destinations with their unique vision.