The Review

Issue date: 4/15/08 Section: Mosaic

A young Vietnamese woman crouches on the ground and washes her hands in a metal basin. Behind her is a drab, deteriorating building with a rusty, brown cruiser bicycle resting against it. A square-cut opening in the wall reveals a primitive, wooden watermill in an unpopulated landscape.

Initially, one would think this is a description of one of the heavily inked pages from National Geographic. However, that is not the case.

Next to the Vietnamese woman, there is a tall and thin American model dressed in a pricey designer dress with matching white sandals. Sitting on a dirt-covered surface with her white ensemble and legs delicately crossed, the model can't help but look out of place in the Third World country setting.

This is a scene from a fashion photo shoot set in Vietnam's Ha Long Bay in woman's magazine Marie Claire's April 2008 issue. The spread has an overall dismal appearance - the model doesn't break a smile once and a camera filter gives the photos a slightly sepia-toned quality. The model's white garb intentionally contrasts with the tarnished, muted background of what could be exotic scenery.

The model's designer duds are expectedly expensive and fabulous, but when placed next to the assumingly poverty-stricken Vietnamese natives, the photo highlights a different and less privileged culture than America's.

It's almost a mockery - the model will most likely get paid more for sitting pretty for a few hours than the Vietnamese locals will for weeks of laborious work.

I have no qualms with exotic locations or the talented photographer. The photos of Ha Long Bay are breathtakingly beautiful and would be even more so without the pouting model. But between the spread's somber appearance and working Vietnamese natives used as a backdrop to high fashion, the magazine indirectly depicts a reality that speaks louder than the clothes - the juxtaposition of Western beauty ideals, identified by expensive tastes and thin-by-choice models, with struggling Third World poverty.

The photo shoot is titled "Washed Ashore," which alone makes me scoff at the idea of a "helpless" and "unfortunate" model left stranded in a distant place, when compared to the situation of the town's inhabitants.

The text on the opening page explains why Marie Claire picked the locale: "The simple grandeur of Vietnam's Ha Long Bay seems a fitting backdrop to fashion's elegant minimalism: soft-edge, architectural shapes in textured silks and barely there colors. Very Zen."

Oh, how fitting a Third World country is for a fashion magazine indeed. Let's wave our luxurious silks in their faces. Of course Ha Long Bay is very Zen - it's Asia. I mean, the Vietnamese workers sure look well-rested and meditative. And barely there colors? More like barely there natives.

This single photo is more than a high fashion photo shoot for a monthly woman's magazine. Marie Claire conveys a sense of elitism toward the Vietnamese people that is purely in bad taste. The natives are people, not props. The presence of suffering people puts the designer garb in a less stylish and favorable perspective.

Leave Ha Long Bay's landscapes and locals to National Geographic. They don't attempt to incorporate Donna Karan skirts in their photo shoots. Marie Claire should simply stick to what it knows.

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