Barbarella, alligators, and Chinese seniors
The second physical publication from online fashion title Indie, this fat, book-like magazine is a treat for anyone with a weakness for clothes. The central feature reimagines Barbarella, with the model Ildjima Toïdé wearing a fabulous mix of archive designer pieces and new pieces. In perhaps my favourite image, we see Toïdé dressed in head-to-toe gold Moschino, replete with a dagger, and an alligator’s tail. Pages play with typography, with Indie’s signature, voluptuous title font blown up large and spread out across the page. The resulting pages — like the fashion — play with time; spreads look a bit like vintage film posters, but at the same time, this is a magazine that feels strikingly modern.
Fashion is the focus here but Indie deviates from it. One brilliant feature in this issue is a series of pictures of a group of elderly men and women in a local park in X’ian, China, by Leslie Shang Zhefeng . The portraits — which are characterful, reflecting the eccentricity of their subjects — observe seniors going about their daily business in the park, playing chess and miniature golf, having their hair cut and doing chin ups. Plumped in the middle of a fashion magazine, the series is delightfully unexpected.
Below we’ve photographed our favourite spreads.
