Richard Avedon

This intimate and loving portrait of the legendary arbiter of fashion, art and culture illustrates the many stages of Vreeland's remarkable life. Born in Paris in 1903, she was to become New York's "Empress of Fashion" and a celebrated Vogue editor.

Richard Avedon was one of the great geniuses of 20th century photography, famous for his fashion photography done for the likes of Vogue, Versace, and Armani, and equally famous for his black and white portraits of American people, both famous and unknown.

Avedon's commercial advertisement for the Japanese womenswear brand Jun Ropé features an innovative and unexpected approach to the genre that reflects the famed photographer's exceptional signature style. Opening onto a behind-the-scenes look at a photo shoot, the camera follows the supermodel Veruschka as she transforms from a suit-clad, mustached character in drag to an unabashedly glamorous fashion icon dressed in a designer gown and posing for Avedon himself. While initially produced for a commercial client with the leading industry talents of the day, the video underscores the artist’s savvy understanding of the performative—and ultimately flexible—nature of social constructions of gender, femininity, and the self.

In this excoriating satire of the fashion industry, Polly Maggoo is a 20-year-old Brooklyn-born fashion model in Paris, on the runway at the big shows where magazine editor Ms. Maxwell is the reigning opinion maker. The ridiculous passes for sublime. Polly becomes the subject of an episode of a vapid TV news documentary series called "Qui êtes-vous?" and is pursued by the filmmaker and by the prince of Borodine, a small country in the Soviet bloc.

A shy Greenwich Village book clerk is discovered by a fashion photographer and whisked off to Paris where she becomes a reluctant model.