'L´Uomo Vogue Italy II', Antonio

•  Antonio Lopes, known as "Antonio"

• 62 X 46 cm
• June-July 1970, L´Uomo, Vogue Italy
• EncrIndia ink, Pentel pens, colored film on paper
• GAL2016.5.31 & GAL2016.5.32
• Acquisition Vogue Paris Foundation 2015
• Palais Galliera, musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris

Antonio Lopes (1943-1986), known as "Antonio", renewed fashion illustration in the second half of the 1960s. The genre had abandoned the pages of major magazines at the turn of the 1950s/60s, in favour of fashion photography. At the opposite end of the scale of the haughty and compactly elegant designs of the New Look years, Antonio offers a style in perfect harmony with the revolutions that took place in the fashion world from the early 1960s to the 1980s. His style perfectly reflects the art of his time. If he likes to quote the flat tints of Japanese prints or the line of an Aubrey Beardsley, his production fits, above all, into the aesthetics of Pop Art, at the beginning of the 1970s. He will then experiment with other forms of expression. 

Antonio's life is inseparable from his work. Friend of Warhol, Lagerfeld, Saint Laurent or Anna Piaggi, he is one of the many celebrities held between New York, Paris and Saint-Tropez. Often working according to a model, he is the discoverer of models or fashion icons such as Jerry Hall, Pat Cleveland, Jessica Lange, Grace Jones, Paloma Picasso that he draws between two sleepless nights. Paraphrasing Yves Saint Laurent who, in 1968, said that he preferred the notion of seduction to that of elegance, Antonio translates a particularly sensual fashionable relationship. He uses his photographs and Polaroids as working documents for his drawings, which establish a distance that allows him to multiply allusions to a liberated sexuality. 

In 1970, he made three drawings - including this double page published in the Uomo Vogue - that testify to all these aspects: sophistication and sensuality of the models, influence of counter-culture, presence of bikers, treated in a homo-erotic way, use of photography with the Saint-Tropez background printed on a coloured film, psychedelic colour palette, association and juxtaposition of motifs largely inspired by Pop Art... Here, the style is identical in every way. The outfits presented come from American Army Surplus. For men's fashion too, the notion of elegance - now obsolete - gives way to that of seduction, which was at that time closely linked to a rebellious spirit, real or interpreted... The influence of Easy Rider by Dennis Hopper, released a year earlier, is obvious.