Purple Magazine
— S/S 2015 issue 23
Iceberg Downtown Gallery
40 years of creative dialogues
photography by OLIVIER ZAHM AND GIANNI OPRANDI
style by CAROLINE GAIMARI
When Paolo Gerani, creative director of Iceberg, told me that his brand is celebrating its 40th anniversary, I was excited about looking through the archives and learning more about the Italian brand, founded in 1974 by Paolo’s parents, Giuliana Marchini Gerani and Silvano Gerani. First in Italy, then worldwide, Iceberg participated in the fun sportswear and knitwear revolution in fashion, with cool shapes; bright, playful colors; and truly original graphic design that fermented a new sense of freedom, inspired by street styles with a distinctively American Pop Art slant.
Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, the first designer of the brand, defined Iceberg’s energetic style and cool volumes, leaving a strongly original mark on the brand’s aesthetic. “He’s a genius,” says Paolo Gerani, “an extremely creative and intelligent designer, and a very well-educated man who became like a friend and a brother. He deeply influenced my teenage years, influencing my discovery and eventual love for contemporary art.” Jean-Charles de Castelbajac also brought his worldly, free-spirited artistic friends, among them Andy Warhol and Vivienne Westwood, into Iceberg’s image, virtually upending the normally hierarchical world of fashion.
From 1980 to ’86, Oliviero Toscani shot Iceberg’s campaigns with a gallery of his own ambassadors: Carla Fracci, Luciano Benetton, and Franco Moschino, to name a few. Later, Steven Meisel featured the likes of Farrah Fawcett, Sofia Coppola, Iggy Pop, and Isabella Rosselini, which increased Iceberg’s range of connections and also my excitement, making me think about a contemporary update. So I said to Paolo: “I want to follow up these campaigns, and shoot and art-direct Iceberg’s reinvented image in a way that combines its past with its future.”
We went to the source, the downtown New York art scene that originally inspired the brand. We decided to remake images from Iceberg’s iconic archives designed by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac and mix them with the new Spring / Summer 2015 collection. I reinterpreted those early works with friends who incarnate the downtown New York scene today. When I told Paolo I’d use an old medium-format Mamiya Press with a Polaroid back — and not a digital camera — he gave me a look of surprised recognition, hesitated for a split second, and said, “Okay, let’s do it. And you have to be in the pictures, too.”
Some of my favourite images from the campaign appear in these 22 Polaroid portraits, which celebrate 40 years of Iceberg’s creative connections to the worlds of art, photography, and advertising.
— Text by Olivier Zahm
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Kim Gordon ICEBERG 2015, musician, artist
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Glenn O’Brien ICEBERG 2015, writer
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Stella Schnabel, JC DE CASTELBAJAC for ICEBERG, actress
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Karley Sciortino ICEBERG 2015, sex writer
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Kim Gordon ICEBERG 2015, musician, artist
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Sandy Kim ICEBERG 2015, photographer
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Olivier Zahm, JC DE CASTELBAJAC for ICEBERG, editor, photographer
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Rita Ackermann ICEBERG 2015, artist
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Donald Cumming and Georgia Ford JC DE CASTELBAJAC for ICEBERG, musician and actress
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Olaf Breuning JC DE CASTELBAJAC for ICEBERG, artist
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Mykki Blanco JC DE CASTELBAJAC for ICEBERG, rapper, performance artist
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Donald Cumming and Georgia Ford ICEBERG 2015, musician and actress
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Stella Schnabel ICEBERG 2015, actress
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Jeanette Hayes ICEBERG 2015, artist
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Rita Ackermann JC DE CASTELBAJAC for ICEBERG, artist
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Olivier Zahm ICEBERG 2015, editor, photographer
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Karley Sciortino JC DE CASTELBAJAC for ICEBERG, sex writer
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Mykki Blanco ICEBERG 2015, rapper, performance artist
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Sandy Kim JC DE CASTELBAJAC for ICEBERG, photographer
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Olaf Breuning ICEBERG 2015, artist
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Jeanette Hayes JC DE CASTELBAJAC for ICEBERG, artist
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Glenn O’Brien JC DE CASTELBAJAC for ICEBERG, writer
