URBAN GUIDE

To raise funds for the charity amFar, fashion brand Moncler asked 32 photographers for their artistic interpretation of its iconic Maya duvet jacket. The theme? Love of course!

During the last New York Fashion Week fashionistas hot-footed it to the Art for Love exhibition master­minded by Moncler at the New York Public Library, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, between 5th Avenue and 42nd Street. This big occasion was essen­­tially a means of raising funds for the amFar found­a­tion for AIDS research. The concept? Moncler, the French-born Italian firm specialised in Alpine outer­wear, asked 32 photographers to snap its ico­nic Maya model; David Bailey, Patrick Demar­che­lier, Arthur Elgort, Inez & Vinoodh, Annie Leibovitz, Peter Lindbergh, Steven Meisel, Terry Richardson, Paolo Roversi, Willy Vanderperre, Bruce Weber, Olivier Zahm and David Sims were among them.

A universal theme
These top fashion photographers were more than happy to comply with this style exercise on the theme of Love, the resulting mosaic of images showing how differently each artist envisions it through their lens. "If you want to understand how the world's greatest photographers work, all of them participating together in a truly unique project, it's all there in these 32 images that in very different ways freely interpret Moncler's duvet jacket. It encompasses adventure and beauty, suggestiveness and humour, on occasion achiev­ing a surreal or Pop Art dimension," explains pho­to­grapher Fabien Baron who curated the event. The artworks were then sold at a silent auction in the library and online at Paddle8, and the proceeds donated to amFar for its Countdown to a Cure initiative aimed at finding a cure for AIDS by 2020.