YESTERDAY ONCE MORE. SPRING/SUMMER 2009. RYAN MCGINLEY SHOOTS A LOOKBOOK FOR BALENCIAGA MENSWEAR. IT'S A MAGIC BOOK, NO LESS.
We do like Ryan McGinley and we really like Balenciaga but we absoluletyadorethe lookbook Ryan McGinley photographed for Balenciaga Menswear spring/summer 2009. It is a charmed book. Everything works.
It is, to our knowledge, the only standalone menswear book Nicholas Ghesquire and co have produced for Balenciaga. It is certainly one of the very few Ryan McGinley books in which the waif-like young men with their clothes on.
The book was reputedly art directed by Nicholas Ghesquiere himself. We can't be 100% sure, but whoever designed it was as big a fan of white space as they were of McGinley's photographs. We love these pages - the photographs remind us of Philip Glass and Robert Wilson'sEinstein on the Beach.
There can't have been many copies printed and each is numbered. We have never seen a number over 1000 so that would be a good estimate of the print run. For a recent(ish) book, it really is exceptionally scarce.
Sadly lookbooks have no official channel for reviews. Bloggers provide the best responses, the most common of which is the 'you can't see the clothes' refrain. But we liked"beautiful shots of beautiful men with beautiful hair,"as found here.
Speaking of white space, the IDEA Books office has been made over with vintage Dieter Rams 606 Shelving. Designed and fitted by our best friends atVitsoeit is a marvel of modernist planning! Photographedherewithout any books it looks like a Thomas Demand paper sculpture!