How Tim Walker Convinced Harry Styles to Pose Naked
Tim Walker shot Harry Styles fully nude for the inside album art for his new record, Fine Line, and the internet still isn’t over it. In an appearance on Ellen Wednesday, Styles revealed that the legendary photographer had to gently coax him into appearing in a shot in which he lies prostrate, naked as the day he was born.
“I did the photos for the album with a British photographer called Tim Walker, who I’m a really big fan of and I’d never really done a shoot like this. We tried it with some other stuff,” Styles told host Ellen DeGeneres. “It was like, ‘This shirt’s not really working so let’s try it without the shirt’. And then it was, ‘Those trousers aren’t really working so let’s try it without the trousers.’ And then he looked at me and I was like, ‘These pants aren’t really working are they?’ So that was how it worked out.”
“Clever, how he did it that way,” DeGeneres joked.
“Yeah,” said Styles. “And now I’m naked.”
Walker, whose surrealist shots can frequently be seen in W, actually isn’t known for his nude photography. In fact, he never even attempted to shoot a male nude into 2017, an experience he said was “bloody hard.” (You can, of course, see those NSFW picture here).
Styles and DeGeneres also discussed his dating life–she made allusions to reported ex Kendall Jenner, and Styles refused to discuss the matter. She also asked if Fine Line was, as Styles has previously stated, inspired by his breakup with model Camille Rowe. He gave a vague, tactful, answer.
“I definitely write from personal experience; I think a lot of people do,” he said. “If you want your songs to be honest and connect with people, it’s usually from writing honestly. It’s definitely about what I was going through at the time, and that’s both good and bad. The thing with this album, for me, was while I was making it, the times when I was sad were probably the saddest times in my life, but at the same time, the times when I was happy were some of the best times I’ve ever had in my life.”
Nudity: a sign of the times.
The Most Provocative Fashion Ad Campaigns of 2018
A year after their infamous campaign featuring as many unclothed naked models as clothed, for fall 2018, the label Palomo Spain enlisted the photographer Kiko Muñoz to divide up their models into two parties once again—though this time with the third party of a leash.
Never mind that most people are terrified of clowns: Eckhaus Latta stayed true to their fun-loving ways by opting to promote their new denim line via topless models topped off with red and white paint.
Kanye West did a lot of senseless things in 2018, but the most organized was undoubtedly tapping his wife, Kim Kardashian, to be photographed by paparazzi in Yeezy Season 6, and then tapping a fleet of models impersonating Kardashian for Yeezy Season 6’s campaign—including none other than Paris Hilton.
As if Yeezy’s follow-up surprise campaign, starring more (and more NSFW) Kim look-a-likes, wasn’t already shocking enough, by the end of 2018, it would turn out that two of its stars (featured above), the Clermont Twins, had become the subject of more and more gruesome headlines.
It’s usually good news for a brand’s Black Friday sale to be promoted in the pages of WWD, but it wasn’t exactly the best of news this past November for Philipp Plein, which snagged that placement because of the amount of accusations leveled at the brand for attempting to tastelessly monetize violence against women.
Two years after Calvin Klein added another controversial ad to their roster, featuring Harley Weir’s upskirt photograph of a model from underneath her dress, Y/Project‘s Glenn Martens tapped the photographer Arnaud Lajeunie to follow in their footsteps, capturing a look from his label’s spring 2019 collection without bothering to feature the model’s face.
Y/Project also stirred things up when it joined in on the ugly footwear trend via a collaboration with Ugg, advertised practically sans clothing.
Jeremy Scott also amped things up for Moschino, painting Gigi Hadid’s skin blue and Kaia Gerber‘s red for the Italian house’s fall 2018 campaign, photographed by Steven Meisel. While the former garnered comparisons to a “supermodel Smurfette,” the latter stirred up controversy on Instagram for predictions that it would prompt accusations of blackface. While a few did call Gerber’s orange skin tone tone-deaf, others joked that she resembled Donald Trump (or perhaps simply ate too many carrots).
In keeping with its description—”the ultimate mash-up of cute and kinky”—Jeremy Scott’s partnership with the collage artist Portis Wasp saw the latter illustrate the pair’s swimwear and underwear collection with a little help from the Disney princesses. (And very little clothing.)
