When
Agnes Gund, the 77-year-old philanthropist and president emerita of the
Museum of Modern Art, got the call, she thought: “That’s odd. What’s
that got to do with someone like me?”
When Fran Lebowitz, the 65-year-old author, got the call, she said, “I thought it was a joke.”
And
when Mellody Hobson, the 46-year-old president of Ariel Investments, a
$10 billion money management firm based in Chicago, got the call, she
mentioned it to her husband, the filmmaker George Lucas, who raised an
eyebrow and said, “Do you know what that is?”
You
can understand the quandaries, given that the call came from the office
of the photographer Annie Leibovitz, and involved a request that each
woman participate in the 2016 Pirelli calendar, the arty soft-core ode
to pinups produced by the Italian tire manufacturer, shot by renowned
photographers, starring supermodels, and never sold but given to an
exclusive group of 20,000 “V.I.P.’s, musicians, politicians and
royalty,” according to a company spokesman.
To say that women like as Mesdames Hobson, Gund and Lebowitz are not its usual subjects is something of an understatement.
In
the 50 years since the Pirelli calendar was conceived as “an
eye-popping advert for their high-quality products, a freebie that would
be proudly displayed and obsessed over year-round by their target
market,” according to “The Calendar: 50 Years and More,” a coffee-table
book from Taschen, it has featured a completely naked Kate Moss, Lara
Stone and Joan Smalls (2012, Mario Sorrenti); Gisele Bündchen, Karen
Elson and Carmen Kass playing peekaboo with bottoms and bosoms (2001,
Mario Testino); and a topless and/or naked Christy Turlington, Naomi
Campbell and Nadja Auermann (1995, Richard Avedon).
But
that was then. On Monday, a new kind of Pirelli calendar was unveiled,
showcasing 12 months of fully clad women (mostly) chosen for their
achievements. Though the calendar has, on rare occasions, featured women
in clothes (most notably in 2013, when it was shot in Brazil by Steve
McCurry), this is the first time there is no provocation in the posing,
and the first time the attraction of the subjects is in their résumés,
not their measurements.
Along with Playboy’s decision in October to end nudity in its pages,
the Pirelli pivot seems to give real substance to the theory that we
are at a flexion point in the public objectification of female
sexuality. Especially because the calendar, which is introduced every
year with a giant party attended by not only the fashion flock but, in
2012, by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the former president of Brazil; and,
in 2014, Roberto Maroni, the president of Lombardy, has become
something of a collector’s item.
It’s
been immortalized in two Rizzoli books (“The Pirelli Calendar: The
Complete Works, 40 Years” and “The Pirelli Calendar: 1964 — 2001, The
Complete Works”). It is, to a certain extent, a historical record.
And
what it is recording this time is “a very macro trend,” said Jennifer
Zimmerman, the global chief strategy officer for the McGarryBowen
advertising agency. “We call it the rise of the shero” — that is, the
female hero. With the switch in subject matter, she said, “the greatest
offender had become the greatest bandwagoneer.”
Continue reading the main story
Aside
from Mrs. Gund (March), who was photographed with her college-age
granddaughter; Ms. Hobson (June); and Ms. Lebowitz (May); the calendar
stars Yoko Ono
(October); Ava DuVernay, the “Selma” director (July); Shirin Neshat,
the Iranian artist (September); Kathleen Kennedy, the producer of
“Lincoln” (February); Patti Smith (November); and Tavi Gevinson, the millennial media maven and actress (August).
The exceptions to the fully-dressed rule are Serena Williams
(April), who is pictured topless, back to the camera, muscles gleaming;
Amy Schumer (December), in a lingerie with her stomach rolls on display
(the joke being she was the one who did not get the message); and the
model and philanthropist Natalia Vodianova (January), in a voluptuous
satin robe with one bare leg exposed and her youngest child clutched in
her arms.
“We
are in the midst of a perfect storm of cultural icons and politics and
Hollywood,” Ms. Zimmerman said. “Between the first credible woman
presidential candidate, all the powerful female characters on television
from ‘Supergirl’ to ‘Madam Secretary’ to ‘Scandal,’ the pressure for
parity in pay, it is impossible to ignore the empowerment of women.
Besides, who uses a calendar anymore? It has to stand for something
else.”
There’s
little doubt that the Pirelli pivot will be widely perceived as a
political statement, not least because Ms. Leibovitz had shot a Pirelli
calendar in 2000 that featured more traditional and unclad models like
Laetitia Casta posed as classic Greek nudes. But is it simply an example
of calculated exploitation of a social trend, a clever attempt to
profit from the spirit of the age or a more permanent commitment to
change?
That the answer is still under debate is indicative of just how sensitive this issue remains.
“I
feel it helps put a new perspective on women of achievement,” Ms.
Hobson said. “You have to give them credit for being bold at this
moment. We have a long way to go, but this is part of that journey.”
Altruism
and political correctness aside, there is also a compelling economic
reason for Pirelli to change direction. It is hard to see the
conjunction of the new calendar and the rise of the female dollar, along
with the fact that increasingly women are directly driving (no pun
intended) or influencing purchasing decisions, as simple coincidence.
According
to Antonio Achille, a partner and managing director of the Boston
Consulting Group, female income worldwide totaled $18 trillion in 2014 —
“an enormous untapped opportunity” — especially because within the
luxury car market in the United States, 50 percent of vehicle purchases
are decided by women, and 75 percent are “influenced” by them. Beyond
that, Mr. Achille said: “Women are superb brand ambassadors. Women share
a positive car experience with more than 20 people on average, while
men share experiences with only two.”
And
as Ms. Zimmerman said: “Women have a disproportionately loud voice
compared to their male counterparts. And for those women it is no longer
socially acceptable to walk into a high-end garage that sells Pirelli
tires and see a calendar with naked girls on the wall. You’d drive right
out again in that Mercedes you came in with.”
All
of which creates something of a conundrum for Pirelli. Part of what has
made its calendar so successful are the celebrated names it attracts,
who provide the tire maker with the halo of their artistry. And the way
it attracts them is by giving them total creative freedom: to go where
they want, pick the women they want and photograph them as they want.
It
was the chance to work with Annie Leibovitz that persuaded her subjects
to be in this calendar, just as it was the chance to work with Steven
Meisel that got Gigi Hadid to pose in molded black latex last year.
Forging relationships with photographers on such shoots can change a
model’s career. According to Ivan Bart, the president of IMG Models,
which represents Ms. Hadid, her Pirelli shoot with Mr. Meisel directly
resulted in the photographer choosing her for the cover of W and Italian
Vogue.
Neither
Ms. Hobson nor Mrs. Gund are attending the gigantic party Pirelli is
hosting in London on Monday to unveil the calendar, underscoring the
fact that their relationship was with Ms. Leibovitz, not Pirelli. As Ms.
Neshat said, “I didn’t feel like I was selling out by doing this as
much as helping Annie support a new idea about female style and beauty.”
And
yet it is Pirelli that will get the credit for being forward-thinking,
and whose pivot has been implicitly endorsed by women like Ms. Neshat.
Simply by being a part of the calendar, she gives it a whole new
credibility.
Pointedly,
however, the company itself is careful to say the about-face was Ms.
Leibovitz’s idea, and to paint the current calendar as part of a
continuum, as opposed to a rejection of its former ways, thus leaving
the door open for another switcheroo. Indeed, Marco Tronchetti Provera,
the Pirelli chairman and chief executive, said that the pivot is simply
another example of the way the calendar “reflects contemporary society.”
In
other words, next year, under a different photographer, at a different
stage, the vision could change. Even if, as Fran Lebowitz said in a
making-of video, “perhaps clothed women are going to have a moment,”
moments by definition pass. And Mr. Bart (not surprisingly) said, “I
would not discount models, especially as they become real
personalities.”
But Ms. Zimmerman thinks the new-look calendar would be “a hard thing to go back on.”
“Right
now Pirelli can legitimately claim they were empowering women as part
of the sexual revolution of the 1960s, and this is an authentic modern
expression of that,” she said. “But to do another 180-degree turn would
start to seem like psychosis. It would confuse the message.”
She
is not alone. “It would be a huge disappointment,” Ms. Neshat said, if
Pirelli 2017 were to “abandon the idea of the women who define modern
life, and go back to sexy girls who are too young to have accomplished
anything.”
Tavi
Gevinson also believes the calendar reflects a point of no return,
though for a different reason. “A white, able-bodied cis-gendered woman
being naked is just not revolutionary anymore,” she said. “I don’t think
anyone is going to be like, ‘Damn, I wanted those naked chicks.’”
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