Corinne Day’s candid photo of the supermodel revels in the ordinary – and shocked the glossy world of fashion
The contemporary reaction to this image and others in Corinne Day’s Under-Exposure feature in Vogue, published in June 1993, was not universally positive. “The pictures are hideous and tragic,” said the then-editor of Cosmopolitan, adding that “they can only appeal to the paedophile market”. Psychotherapist Susie Orbach described them as “just this side of porn”. For anyone with misgivings about fashion’s growing obsession with waifish bodies in seedy settings, here – in the august pages of Vogue, no less – was something to get properly exercised about.
Day had worked for a while as a model before becoming a photographer in the late 1980s, and she was far more interested in the behind-the-scenes realities of the fashion industry than its glamorous facades. Day first encountered Moss when the model was just 14 while trawling London agencies for new talent, and found in her a perfect subject for her no-frills documentary approach. “I encouraged her to be natural,” Day recalled of their early work together for The Face, which set Moss on the road to stardom.
The Vogue shoot took it a step further, capturing the model at 19 in her jarringly mundane London flat, which she shared with then-boyfriend Mario Sorrenti. The clothes – slouchy tank tops, cheap-looking underwear – made a mockery of what you’d expect from a lingerie feature in the haute-fashion bible. It was still stylised, of course (Moss’s friend James Brown did her hair), but not in the way Vogue readers were accustomed to.
This image and one other from that 1993 shoot are included in The Domestic Stage, a new book by Adam Murray about fashion photography in home settings. What’s striking now is how unexceptional they appear; in this social media age, when intimacies of all kinds flood our screens at every moment, the shock value has drained away almost completely. If any remains, it’s in the sheer ordinariness of the setting. Seeing one of the most successful supermodels ever amid flaky windows, loose wires and damp laundry still has the power to surprise.
The Domestic Stage by Adam Murray is published by Thames & Hudson on 4 September
Photograph courtesy of the Estate of Corinne Day/Bridgeman Images
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