Bazaar Models by Derek Blasbury

Title - Bazaar Models

Author - Derek Blasbury,  Glenda Bailey

Year - 2015

Review - Sampson I. Onwuka

The Bazaar is a magazine in the twilight of its career as the major force for transforming beautiful faces and body types into models and sometimes super-models. Bazaar Model is a review of the selected models who has graced the front page of the magazine and whose lives dominated the fashion industries for more than half a century. Some of the faces refuse to die away because they were successful and include Suzy Parker and Linda Evangelista. There are designers who torch their lives, Alexander McQueen, Versace, Balenciaga, etc., but the models help to carry the fashion industry and here in the Bazaar Models, their personal lives are shared with the rest of us.    

Bazaar Magazine is known for presenting models that transition from the fashion industry to the Hollywood and perhaps to other things such as talk show host. The roll call list – Cindy Crawford, Dorian Leigh, Christie Brinkley, Kate Moss, is to name a few but who will forget these faces. It is interesting that these models remain a cog in the annals of Hollywood and their beautiful faces show up everywhere.  It was all about their face savings for models whose curves are interesting – Gisele Bundchen, Naomi Campbell, Iman – and there is a special treatment of these models in Bazaar Models. 

In this collector’s edition the lives of these Bazaar models come alive and their stories leave their hidden places to the front page of the magazine. Their stories inspire the rest of us who follow them secretly and it also inspires those who follow them publicly. Their stories in the way presented in the magazine are meant to also inspire a next generation of models. The editors write in part about Coco Channel, in part about the passions of Karl Lagerfeld and in part about my favorite editor – Diana Vreeland.

It is easy to observe that there is emphasis on the faces, some of them change with the role expected to play. It is good that the editors of the Bazaar magazine emphasize the face of these models. This magazine does this largely for the fact that the pages and the pictures speak only bits and pieces of the fashion industry. For that it speaks of the picture perfect when it all comes together, everybody plays a role; their role leading to a view that defies, inspires, and sometimes uplifts.

In the role of the professional model is meet expectations of the industry that hired that services. They are sometimes compelled to do uneasy things for the picture, their body takes the beating of relentless, their souls are broken and in the end, after long series of make-up a fitting face of the model emerges so also the Bazaar magazine.

These beautiful faces do not always inspire, and in some cases when the body is ‘working’ on the tram way, when their whole personality is put on display - beauty is not really theirs. But then at such occasion we find the role of the editors of Bazaar magazine such as Derek Blasbury and Glenda Bailey very vital. These editors read the models very closely and make fitting adjustment for the best pictures. The cameras and the camera men and women perform their jobs, so also the artist who make it work.  

In the end some of the faces are worth remembering and others are not. For me the beautiful faces include Christy Turlington, Iman, Giselle Bundchen, and to an extent Suzy Parker, Kate Moss, Marisol Berenson. We are not part of their world even if we try very hard and as someone argued; these models know what moves them and no one will ever know. They are however expected to be part of our lives, expected to conform to our tastes and pursuit and to our conception of the image of the woman which is not easy.

    

There are references to exceptional artist such as Judy Garland and Elizabeth Taylor but the book is not about Hollywood it is about models – Bazaar models. Bazaar Model is a triumph even though it failed to mention how these models transitioned from the age of magazine dominance and print edition to the age of technology. How do we increase the light of the golden age of magazine with its epic 80’s and minimalist 90’s to a magazine that is facing challenges? How does Bazaar Magazine react to the images of prospective models that went viral without the magazine? How is it that expected of the next generation of models for another half a century?