Marcel Winatschek

The Glamour of Collapse

Steven Meisel has spent decades photographing what the fashion industry does to itself—the excess, the self-destruction, the beauty that arrives pre-damaged. This editorial places supermodels inside a rehabilitation facility: hospital whites, the particular vacancy of institutional spaces, glamour stripped down to its chemical bones. It’s disquieting in the way his best work always is. You can’t tell whether it’s critique or celebration, and Meisel is too smart to resolve that tension for you. The faces are flawless. The setting says otherwise.