Malpolitik

Russian girls smiling on Vogue Turkey's latest cover. It's a deal, it's an image, it can be seen from every single angle you want to look at from, wherever you're seating at the moment. I don't seat, I lay in my bed, I hear kids running back and forth, in the corridor, and laugh, and shout their happiness at each of their fast steps. I think, force myself to think despite my red and itchy eyes, despite the cold outside and the heavy night pasting its sticky darkness on the rooftops of the city. Makes me wonder, makes us wonder, should make everyone else wonder if everyone else likes to do so. What's Russia. What's Turkey. And France, and the rest of our world. Is Russia a slice of nostalgia, painted red by old memories from USSR? Is it the neverending, eternal expression of the Great Russian Soul that brought so much to culture, to literature? Does Russia equal Vladimir Putin's views? Or something else. Ditto on Turkey. Does Turkey mean souvenirs from the Ottoman Empire? Or the legacy of Mustafa Kemal? Or does it ring like the awesome architecture spread around the whole country no matter what culture or period it comes from? Or does Turkey have to be considered only through the prism of today's political context, and related only to Mr Erdogan's current and short-sightened aspirations? Same applies to France, today more than yesterday, and yesterday more than yesteryear. What's France? Centuries of dedication to arts, to ideas? Or just today's pain and doubts? Or, even worse, today's wave of blind hatred raising from those who didn't even suffer? And we can go on, and on, and on again. Does Bush, father and sons, own America more than Bukowski or John Fante? Shall we relate Germany to Dr Goebbels or shall we cherish Thomas Mann and Josef Beuys instead? What's Great Britain: Thatcher? Churchill? Shakespeare? Benny Hill? And we could go on forever, again. Examples are legions, sorry for the pun. Things change, times do so too, ideas as ideals follow things and times, eras as much as errors. But fashion knows no law and no other boundaries than the tiny borders between a good photograph and a poor one. Fashion can be a vehicle to carry thoughts or just a medium dedicated to a certain kind of beauty, whatever the latter is in the brain of its creator. Fashion is just a word, or the child of a broken miror. It's a way to express that begins when an eye get caught by its imagery. And, most of times, fashion just is. So, russian girls are smiling, even laughing for one of them, on Vogue Turkey's cover. No matter how you, all, will interpret it, no matter how involved one or another might be. If fashion can't erase a border for now, it still can set some check-points to fire. Period, and don't sleep too tight, we need awakened sights.

Above are Nastya Sten and Valery Kaufman by David Slijper. Teeth and lips, fancy-free faces and fancy clothes.