STYLE
Guess, an American dream From Bandol, France to Los Angeles, a look back at the Marciano brothers' entrepreneurial adventure in denim. BY VICKY CHAHINE
It happened back in 1989. Yet Paul Marciano still remembers the embarrassed silence of his two brothers when they first saw the campaign that changed the course of Guess history: a close-up black-and-white photograph of Claudia Schiffer taken by Ellen von Unwerth. The German model was wearing nothing but a vintage corset. The bright red triangular logo was the only nod to the brand that Paul, Maurice and Georges Where's the I must have heard that sentence two thousand times! My brothers couldn't understand why none of the brand's clothes appeared. For me, it was clear: I wanted to create an image that people would remember. I've always made films i Guess Creative Director Paul Marciano explained to French magazine Le Point in a rare press appearance (his last interview was over ten years ago). A few years earlier, in 1987, his two brothers had even sidelined him after discovering that he had shot images of bullfighters in Seville... before welcoming him back into the fold. Not a single Guess product in the photos, but an esthetic inspired by the film The Magnificent Seven, with an audacity that set it apart from other fashion magazine campaigns. That visual hallmark can also be found in the coffee-table book A Fourth Decade of Guess? Images released this year, the fourth since Guess was founded in 1981.
100 | March 21, 2024 | Le Point 2694