X-Ray Hardback - 1999

From the publisher

World renowned makeup artist Francois Nars started photographing just two years ago. Deciding to art direct his own marketing campaign, Nars started casting and shooting models. The results were smashing: soon ads appeared in W, Harpers Bazaar, and Allure, featuring stunning full-frame images of strikingly elegant women, in very untraditional casting, showcasing his new, blazing hot NARS line of cosmetics.The famed designer decided to expand his vision: create an enormous art book with over two hundred richly stylized presentations of elegance, featuring his favorite personalities from the worlds of fashion, design, film-even passersby on the street: people who personified to Nars the very notion of bold and audacious chic. Nars then set about travelling the globe and inviting each individual to sit for him, styling each portrait session according to the sitters metier, personality, and elan. The results are simply stunning: 240 immense color portraits-creations, really-extracting the essence, as with an X ray, of the worlds most remarkable individuals: Alexandra Von Furstenberg, Alexander McQueen, Amber Valletta, Angelica Huston, Anna Sui, Betsy Bloomingdale, Boy George, Bridget Fonda, Dave Navarro, Donatella Versace, Eartha Kitt, Francesco Clemente, Grace Jones, Hamish Bowles, Isabella Rossellini, Ivanka Trump, Jacqueline de Ribes, Juliette Lewis, Kate Moss, Lauren Hutton, Lauryn Hill, Marc Jacobs, Paloma Picasso, Penny Marshall, Polly Mellen, Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece, RuPaul Charles, Stephanie Seymour, Sylvia Miles, The Divine David, Tim Burton, Verushka, and many, many others. X-Ray is not fashion photography: it is a portraiture of style that is meta-fashion.

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