Fashion Editorial – The Virgin Suicides

Photographers: Valeria Schettino e Roberta Marino
(FB: facebook.com/ValeriaSchettinoPhotography1/
facebook.com/robertamarinophotographer)
Instagram: @valeria.Schettino / @brilllu
Behance: behance.net/ValeriaSchettino
valeriaschettinophotography.tumblr.com
Models: Carolina Luise, Viktoriya Tori, Francesca di Lillo
Stylist & Makeup: Mirta Robiony Annalisa Palmieri

Wardrobe Credits:
Vintage shirt + skirt American Apparel /
white dress & Other Stories
white dress with flowers Antica Sartoria Positano
dress Topshop / vintage dress / vintage dress

It is the 70s, In the middle-class district of an American city, which is trying to leave the old strictly religious culture, to enter into modernity. The Lisbon sisters, with their beauty, shock the lives of everyone, They are Blondes, pale and fascinating. The youngest sister’s suicide, in fact, breaks the balance.

Despite that tragic event, the sisters go back to school almost more beautiful and glowing than before, but the youngest suicide has already spread the seed of evil and her sisters’ destiny is now scarred. That is what our photographs want to tell: innocence, angelic beauty and then anxiety and the abandonment of frivolousness. A mysterious and terrible adolescence, enlightened by a golden light that becomes darker and darker. The photographs are a tribute to all of that and to fascinating Sofia Coppola’s film, in our search for nuances, tones, clothes and perfect faces to better express it.

In the first part, the choice of colors is willingly tending to light pink tones, to express the balance in a deep and symbolic relationship among sisters, made of laughter and happiness while they play, hug each other and smile. The makeup is simple and natural to highlight youth. The light blue color, which we can find in the makeup and in the sisters’ eyes, reminds the sky and communicates quietness and peace. In another foreground, we find the color red just under the eyes, a color which reminds blood and death. In the following photographs, in fact, there’s a sense of anxiety: the faces of the girls become darker, there are no more smiles or joyful behaviors, but melancholic and concerned expressions.

The colors of the pictures become less bright and darker, to highlight the negative course of their lives. We wanted to represent all of that through symbolic gestures and details: they stay together, carry each other until the end without letting each other go, they embrace each other and literally hold on each other. The older ones cover the younger ones’ eyes, almost like they were trying to prevent them from seeing the evil that surrounds them, whispering comforting words. The first short dresses, where the white color is Prevalent, want to emphasize the girls’ purity and carefreeness, synonyms of virginity and spirituality. Some vintage pieces are original from the 70s, since the film is set in that time, and the palette of colors was chosen considering Coppola’s film aesthetics.

The location symbolizes a cold setting, with bare, bleak and winter trees in contrast to the rays of the sun. There is a small artificial lake. The Water is The Source of Life, vital principle intended like the middle of Regeneration, a symbol of metamorphosis. Our story ends it with a hug, in which the three girls come together and become a single entity. “We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy, and how you ended up knowing which colors went together. We knew that the girls were our twins, that we all existed in space like animals with identical skins, and that they knew everything about us though we couldn’t fathom them at all. We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them.” ― Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides