Part of me wishes

[imomus]

You'd think it would be easy to find cute girls in fashion magazines, but they never seem to feature the nerdy dark-haired, dark-eyed types I like. Page after page, fashion mags present a disconcertingly Aryan conception of beauty. So I play safe with Japanese idols like Yu Aoi, who have the kind of oriental-giaconda sloe-eyed serenity I like.

One of my favourite streetwear / style mags these days is Dutch mag Code. I like their visual style, and I like their taste in girls. It was in Code that I first saw photos of Emmy the Great, seen here in a slick new video in collaboration with British band Brighton Port Authority:

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The new edition of Code alerts me to a slightly different kind of beauty, equally appealing: they have some lovely pictures of Sofia Boutella, a 26 year-old Algerian dancer.

I come pretty late to Sofia -- she has the fingerprints of Nike and Madonna and Jamiroquai on her already. Here she is in a Nike documentary:

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That reminds me that when I recommended the cuteness of Lou Doillon she was already a figurehead for Lee Cooper. Then again, I'm not always late, and I don't always take my cue from the commercial juggernaut of spectacular mass culture; I've discovered a few beauties myself -- quiet, shy, dark-eyed beauties, some who enlisted me to promote them, others who forbade even to be mentioned. I could start a modeling agency with the Turkish girls I see daily on the U8 line here in Berlin.

Watch this Tateshots video in which Juergen Teller talks about, and shows, the models turning up on his doorstep and I defy you (if you're male and hetero, or lesbian for that matter, or bi) not to entertain a passing fantasy about the exact limits you'd place on your power over these girls. Part of me really wishes I'd been a fashion photographer -- do I really need to spell out which part?