It's been a while since I've taken more than 30 minutes to really read an issue if UK Vogue and even the boyf commented that I was studying the new UK Vogue [1] June issue for an abnormally long amoutn of time.  However, the main draw for me was the 'Orient Excess' editorial photographed by Javier Vallhonrat [2] and styled by Lucinder Chambers as it a) features an old favourite of mine Elise Crombez who looks so radically/refreshingly different here and b) is accompanied and really SHOULD be viewed in tandem with a really insightful article by Rana Kabbani who dispells the Western notion of an Ottoman harem by recounting the tales of her own grandmother's REAL harem life in Damascus.  Ultimately it criticises the way in which Western artists portray Orientalist life, to be fully demonstrated at the upcoming Tate Britain 'The Lure of the East' exhibition [3].  Kabbani has expanded on this cultural misrepresentation in 'Imperial Fictions' [4] which definitely follows the Edward Said 'Orientalism' [5] school of thought in that the Orient has been romanticised and misrepresented (people who like to bring up this book when criticisng me for using the word 'Oriental' [6] should know that I have read this book numerous times and once again without sounding like an ol' broken record...it's a UK/US difference that you might not be aware of!).

The women that the paintings have portrayed as being passive, still and as exotic as possible is sort of overturned in the editorial though where I think the photographer has taken note of what Kabbani had to say about the lack of human feeling in those old paintings by Occidents.  The 'noisy, active, ferocious, brave, hard-working, opinionated and fun' behavious that Kabbani witnessed in the harem women of her grandmother's generation has translated well to Elise Crombrez looking far more complex than what those paintings suggest as someone who has struggled (cue sweaty hair...) and basically given harem depicition an 'edge'.  Anyway, a good little read that kept me more or less occupied on the traffic-laden busride and of course, the editorial speaks for itself... 

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