At a cocktail get together in Decrease Manhattan on Friday to rejoice a brand new assortment of clothes and niknaks designed by the style photographer Steven Meisel for Zara, virtually the one boldface identify who didn’t present up was Steven Meisel.
“I would have been surprised if he had come,” mentioned Edward Enninful, the editor in chief of British Vogue, standing exterior the occasion area on Howard Avenue because the mannequin Kaia Gerber walked by. “He’s shy. He lets the work speak for itself.”
If Mr. Meisel have been a film star, mentioned one other visitor, the author James Reginato, he’d be Greta Garbo.
Mr. Meisel’s photograph spreads are recognized for his or her ingenious and sometimes satirical narratives. In “Makeover Madness,” a 2005 characteristic for Italian Vogue, Linda Evangelista posed as a couture-clad socialite with a cosmetic surgery habit.
Ms. Evangelista was considered one of many fashions on the get together, together with quite a few editors, stylists and different fashion-world individuals who have labored with Mr. Meisel.
He appears to be having a second. Along with the Zara collaboration, Phaidon is publishing a e book this month, “Linda Evangelista Photographed by Steven Meisel.” On Oct. 6, Christie’s is holding an public sale titled “Madonna x Meisel — the Sex Photographs” of greater than 40 pictures from Madonna’s 1992 espresso desk e book, “Sex.”
Mr. Meisel, who shot the duvet for Madonna’s 1984 album, “Like a Virgin,” was her chief collaborator for “Sex.” She has credited him with educating her to deal with every photograph shoot as “a small film” and to remodel in every into a brand new character. “He was the first person to introduce me to the idea of reinvention,” Madonna as soon as mentioned in an interview with Vogue.
A number of fashions on the get together spoke of how Mr. Meisel had both discovered signature seems to be for them or modified their appearances in methods that they had not imagined.
Karen Elson, who made her identify with a goth princess look, was decked out in a black trench coat that Mr. Meisel had designed for Zara. She mentioned that when she met Mr. Meisel in 1996, she was “a mousy strawberry blond.” On their second shoot collectively, for Italian Vogue, Mr. Meisel tried one thing new.
“They shaved my eyebrows off and colored my hair red,” Ms. Elson mentioned. “It was the first time I saw myself, if that makes sense. Steven has this uncanny ability to make his subjects feel seen. It was like I had been transformed into who I am, and that’s something magical he possesses. They call him a Svengali for a reason.”
The mannequin Joan Smalls recalled working with Mr. Meisel on a Moschino advert marketing campaign by which he spoofed a TV collection from the ’80s the place “all the women hate each other.”
If solely she might keep in mind the identify of the present.
“‘Dynasty’?” a reporter requested.
“Yes, that’s it. Exactly,” she mentioned. “It was just so much fun.”
Mr. Meisel way back stopped going to occasions the place he is likely to be photographed. However everybody in style is aware of his look: androgynous, with lengthy black hair and all black garments, with a punk edge. His designs for Zara have been of a bit with that. “It’s his uniform,” the mannequin Karolina Kurkova mentioned as she picked out a black leather-based biker cap from the racks.
A number of toes away, the hairstylist Julien d’Ys was attempting on a faux-fur winter hat that advised a mash-up of Dr. Zhivago and Rick Owens. Mr. d’Ys described how Mr. Meisel had introduced him to New York within the early ’80s to satisfy the designer Stephen Sprouse.
Mr. Sprouse and Mr. Meisel had labored collectively within the ’70s, below the designer Halston. Mr. Sprouse, who died in 2004, was the studio supervisor. Mr. Meisel, a gifted illustrator, was liable for offering the Halston seamstresses with drawings that served as blueprints. However he didn’t get together with the boss, who derisively nicknamed him “Pocahontas,” Mr. Meisel instructed Vogue in a uncommon interview in 2009.
After a while at Ladies’s Put on Every day, Mr. Meisel was dropped at Condé Nast by its editorial director, Alexander Liberman, and started taking pictures for a lot of of its publications. Prada, Calvin Klein, Louis Vuitton and Versace began calling on him for advert campaigns. In these days, Mr. Meisel went in every single place — Mudd Membership, Space, Marc Jacobs exhibits. The reclusive half, Mr. d’Ys mentioned, got here later.
In 2009, when the Worldwide Middle of Pictures staged an exhibition that includes Mr. Meisel’s work, the Vogue editor Anna Wintour assigned a profile of Mr. Meisel. The outcome was an article suggesting {that a} attainable purpose for his reclusiveness was insecurity about his weight.
After that, Mr. Meisel shot for American Vogue solely sporadically. Requested in regards to the obvious deterioration of the journal’s relationship with Mr. Meisel, Ms. Wintour mentioned in an e-mail, “Steven is an absolutely brilliant photographer, someone whose work defines our era and Vogue’s history, and I admire him so much.”
At somewhat previous 6 p.m., Tonne Goodman, a former style director at Vogue, made a beeline to Ms. Evangelista, who was decked out in a black oversize Meisel for Zara blazer alongside together with her personal billowing black skirt and a pair of Meisel-designed biker boots.
“Aren’t they great?” she mentioned.
Mr. d’Ys gave Ms. Evangelista a kiss hiya, which was an extended embrace.
“He gave me my original haircut!” Ms. Evangelista mentioned, recalling a shoot from early in her profession, when Mr. Meisel was behind the digital camera and Mr. d’Ys styled her hair. “He’s the one who made me cry.”
As Ms. Evangelista instructed it, she wasn’t ready originally to alter her look so drastically. However that’s what it was like working with Mr. Meisel.
A reporter requested her why he seemed to be having a resurgence.
“But is it a resurgence?” Ms. Evangelista mentioned. “I don’t know. I think he’s done a few things all at the same time, and there is this younger generation that’s coming to appreciate him now and discover him, I guess.”
“He’s legendary,” she continued. “We all go into our quieter moments and then resurface. It’s not like he ever went away. Not like me.”
