Fame Game

With time to finally catch up on all the fashion magazine reading I've missed in the past four months, I'm here to share a spread from the October 2011 issue of Flare Magazine, titled Fame Game.  What struck me about this spread was not the model or the fashion.  In fact, I found the looks to be dull and average - your typical glamorous photoshoot.  None of the photos really made my jaw drop, but what made me linger a little bit longer on each page instead of swiftly flipping through them was the theme.  As any person familiar with the process behind putting together a fashion spread knows, a theme that ties all photos together is key.  For Fame Game, the theme was, well, climbing the oftentimes slippery ladder of fame.  Below is a look at the spread, with respective captions above each photo.

The sheer reality is that you haven't really made it until your face is plastered on a Times Square billboard.

J'adore the star spangled spotlight, but it's lonely at the top.

Dress to impress - today it's almost famous, tomorrow it's Internet sensation.

A little snakeskin and late night scandal never hurt anyone.

Overexposed and underdressed: essential elements of Youtube fame.

Piling on the fashion hits creates a magnet for the paparazzi.

A woman in traffic stopping red becomes the only woman in the room.

Generally, photos in a fashion spread all have a similar feeling, but Fame Game branches off by jet setting us all over the place.  I found the use of the billboard, Youtube interface and TV screen to be very creative, but at the same time, the spread as a whole was incoherent.  I felt like I was looking at 7 individual photos instead of an entire spread.  Even the story only loosely tied all the photos together - how did she go from being plastered on a billboard and being "at the top", to becoming a Youtube sensation?  Maybe that was the idea, to show how fame is just one big confusion.  Nonetheless, a spread about the reality of fame is an idea worth commending.  Fame may be a game, but it's a deceiving game where the winners don't always play by the rules.

Image Source: Fashion Photography, noirfacade