💭 Adèle Exarchopoulos for VOGUE Japan
This article first appeared in the VOGUE JAPAN December 2015 Issue No. 196.
ADÈLE EXARCHOPOULOS
VOGUE Japan December 2015.
One of the most striking things about meeting the French actress Adèle Exarchopoulos for the first time is her open and raw beauty. She has an unaffected splendor that comes not just from her lush chestnut hair, hazel gold-flecked eyes and full bee-stung lips. It also radiates out from within her. It’s a beauty born from her fearless personality, which she continues to leave bare to the world. She does not filter, dumb down for easier consumption or shield away anything about herself.
This fact was undeniable in her break out role as Adèle in the film Blue is the Warmest Color, which won her the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013. Making her the youngest artist ever to be giving the festival’s highest honor, and also the first actress (alongside her co-star Lea Seydoux) to receive the prize in addition to the film’s director.
“I am young and I still have so much to learn and discover,” said Exarchopoulos humbly about her budding acting career.
Online as well Exarchopoulos’s delightful Instagram feed, which she has not made private, shows the 21-year-old unabashedly gallivanting with friends, taking selfies and posting her favorite inspirational citations. One of her most recent quotes comes from the singer Nina Simone that states, “I’ll tell you what freedom is to me, no fear.”
It’s a message the actress has taken to heart professionally as she just wrapped her first English language movie called The Last Face. Directed by Sean Pean, Exarchopoulos worked alongside Oscar winners Charlize Theron and Javier Bardem in the highly anticipated film. “When I hear myself speak English I feel like I almost don’t have the same personality, the same subtleties, as I do when I speak French,” she admitted freely.
Undoubtedly it is this fearlessness and natural beauty that attracted Louis Vuitton’s creative director Nicolas Ghesquière to Exarchopoulos. She has been a front row guest at his Vuitton shows since the designer’s first cruise collection for the house and now she the face of the brand’s resort 2016 collection.
“Nicolas has a understanding of elegance that goes beyond femininity in his designs,” said the actress about what appeals to her in Ghesquière’s work. “He is very cerebral designer.”
If the Louis Vuitton clothing is cerebral, the brand’s advertizing campaigns, all of which have all been shot by Juergen Teller, are decidedly not. They have an unfettered and stark beauty to them that give the clothing an approachable allure.
In May Exarchopoulos flew to Palm Springs to take in the resort show, which was presented at the famed spaceship-like Bob Hope house. “There was an amazing energy at the show and the collection had a real poetry to it,” said the actress. “It really was more like a party then a fashion show. But at the same time very poetic and very modern.”
The next day she spent hours with Teller wandering over the grounds and through the halls of the unique home, which looks almost untouched since it was built in the 1970s, hunting out inspirational locations. “It was one of my favorite shoots because it felt like I was almost on a film,” explained Exarchopoulos. “Juergen is always in the present and in motion, it was so comfortable. He walks with you around the place and as soon as you feel good somewhere you stop and he starts to take photos.”
Some of Exarchopoulos’s favorite images were shots of her sitting in an off color all red room inside the house. “It was something about that room that really got to me. I really wanted try and represent the silence and the eeriness of the room in the photos. It made me think of the movie The Shining a bit. I also think the room really works with the clothing. Even in this room, with these uncomfortable colors, the clothing worked.”
Teller’s campaign shows Exarchopoulos wearing Louis Vuitton clothing in a very unpretentious way. She is not so much posing with them as she is living in them. He captures her climbing the hills of the aired desert surrounding the Hope house, sitting on industrial sized pink trash bins and getting drenched in a cascade of water in a rocky stream.
But what the actress enjoyed most about the shoot was working with Teller. His aesthetic dovetailed with her own in its real and natural approach to his chosen form of artistic expression. “There is something very brut and real and grounded,” she said about the photographer’s style. “His are very intelligent images because he has been clever in how he works. You don’t waste hours on make-up and preparation. It’s your skin and just life as it is. When you do a shoot with him you are really present and in the moment and he just captures that moment.”
The resulting fashion campaign is a beautiful meeting of two creative minds. Both Exarchopoulos and Teller are clearly more comfortable in the real world. And yet it is how they are able to relaying its pure beauty through the eye of artistry that has made both of them such acclaimed artists.
