She Arrives in Peace, Wearing Platforms

The premise is simple: an alien lands on Earth, steps into the wilderness, and wanders through it overwhelmed and delighted, dressed impeccably. Photographer Eva Zar shot this editorial for the Austrian magazine C-Heads, with model Lena as the visitor—not the sleek chrome kind, not the big-eyed grey kind, but the kind that raids the wardrobe of every planet she passes through and arrives looking like she belongs everywhere and nowhere at once.

Aliens in science fiction are generally stripped of vanity. They’re too busy being wise or menacing to care what they’re wearing. But if something from out there ever did show up, the real question would be whether their sense of aesthetics clashes with ours or humiliates it. Zar and stylist Christoph Rumpf bet on the latter. Lena moves through the landscape in platform shoes and saturated layers, and the natural world just accepts her.

It’s a brief trip, documented in stills. But the character has a completeness to her. She’s not lost. She’s just taking notes.