When Kylie met Kylie, to talk about Terry…
It is when Kylie Minogue stops to talk that I know I’ve been transported into a parallel universe. There she is, on the red carpet at the NYC Met Ball – fashion’s night of nights – in all her petite perfection, smiling and speaking about the crossover of fashion and celebrity.
Terry Richardson – the mega successful fashion photographer, who is the object of a swirling controversy over alleged sexual harassment – took the now notorious photo oh so long ago, of the princess of pop’s pert bottom peeking out from under a tennis skirt. And no, she didn’t regret working with him, and tells us: “he does something very singular and I was happy to play along”.
He is the subject of similarly supportive comments from Rita Ora, who looks like a gladiator goddess, laced in gold. She did a shoot for him on Monday – the shoot was a wonderful experience she says, and she doesn’t want to talk about the allegations, because Terry is her friend.
Because Terry is his friend, Gavin McInnes does want to talk about the allegations. He says they should be dismissed as howl-round, perpetuated by the internet and twitter, and a campaign of what he calls ‘feminist McCarthyism’.
Fashion photographer Angela Cappetta tries to answer our questions while she’s shooting pictures of a model on her studio rooftop. She laughs when I ask her where Terry Richardson is in the pantheon of fashion photographers, and says there’s no pantheon. The job is just to sell stuff: jewelry, lipstick, clothes.
Over at the Models’ Alliance, Sarah Ziff has set up a confidential service to help models who’ve been sexually harassed, or worse, at work. She wants a change in legislation, to allow models to sue for harassment.
Jamie Peck claims she was coerced into performing a sex act on Terry Richardson. At the time, she was nude modelling, to raise money for college. He invited her to his studio to model for him. Sitting in her back yard in Brooklyn, she tells us, ‘It was pretty awful, the whole thing. It was a weird weird thing for me, and I felt really gross about it afterwards.’
We tried to talk to Terry Richardson to hear his side of allegations that he has sexually harassed young women in the process of photo shoots. We asked his publicists, we contacted him via email, and got a direct no to our requests for an interview.
Then we went to his studio address, to try to talk to him there. He said no in person. He was just back from the gym.
He has written though, for the Huffington Post, to say he has never coerced someone into something they didn’t want to do. And that he gives everyone he works with enough respect to view them as having ownership for their free will and make their decisions accordingly.
His images clearly can and do sell stuff, inspire and provoke. Yet a number of fashion magazines, including American Vogue, say they have no future plans to work with him. And a slowly increasing number of models say they won’t work with him again.
But in the murky mutually dependent world of fashion very few people will actually say why, which makes divining the whole and absolute truth virtually impossible.
The Model Alliance http://modelalliance.org/
Terry Richardson – terrysdiary.com
Angela Carpetta – www.angelacappetta.com/
Jewelry for a Cause – jewellery on model in piece www.jewelryforacause.net/
Kemi K – make up artist – www.kemilembe.com/
Aine Campbell Instagram – @ainerosecampbell
Follow @C4KylieM on Twitter