Did Vogue Go Too Far? Lady Gaga’s New Dress Size

We all know that fashion and glamour photography can be controversial at times. First with Kate Upton’s horribly retouched cover of Sports Illustrated, then with the leak of Victoria’s Secret’s untouched photos and their debatable over-retouch of Lais Ribeiro earlier this month. Well, now it seems to be Vogue magazine that’s the culprit, and their celebrity of choice… the eccentric Lady Gaga. It seems the re-toucher might have been a little overzealous with the liquify tool in Photoshop, making our lovely pop-icon into a disproportionate Barbie doll on September’s cover.

However weird it may be, it’s likely this was a conscious choice. That said, how do you feel about the retouch? Did the folks at Vouge go too far, or should we just learn to accept this as industry standard?

gaga2 Did Vogue Go Too Far? Lady Gagas New Dress Size

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http://twitter.com/Buster083 Brock
*Vogue
arkhunter
I’d say it’s an artistic choice to go ridiculous (as that *is* LGG’s MO). I don’t think they are trying to be real with it. It reminds me of the look of the Queen of Hearts in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. (it’s just not her head that is giant)
digitaloxygen
Who says he was over zealous? Judging by the shape of the outfit in some of the clips from the video it doesn’t look like he tweaked it that much.
http://www.facebook.com/michael.miller.5815 Michael Miller
It’s not a he, its a they. Mert & Marcus shot it, but I’m with you….looks fine to me. Everyone complains about too much photoshop until Vogue calls you and pays you out the butt to photoshop famous people with rat faces.
http://twitter.com/Angelrebirth Michael Marcopoulos
Photoshop or not, she’s still ugly
http://twitter.com/cojadate cojadate
GIven that Lady Gaga is not of Khoikhoi ancestry, it is clear to everyone that her body is not really anything like this, so it’s completely different to standard Photoshop distortions. In any case, at least it’s promoting an unconventional vision of beauty :)
TadaoCern
Your inner world must be quite ugly and sad to say that out loud about someone even if you don’t like that person…
Nathan Mollison
It’s quite clear from the video that the dress actually has quite a bit of volume in the hips-type area. People need to chill out a bit from the “oh shit it’s a Photoshop disaster” angle lately!
http://twitter.com/albertzablit Albert Zablit
indeed.
http://www.facebook.com/ashkanahmadi2 Ashkan Ahmadi
so saying someone is ugly makes our inner world ugly and saying someone is beautiful means our inner world is beautiful? o.O wow
http://www.facebook.com/DarkPhotography Mark Weikert
Totally agree. Also, the angle that she is standing seems proportionate in the leg area. And worst case scenario is that it will start a new trend of knee reduction surgery. Maybe new workout videos to lose weight in the knee area. Fat knees are OUT this season!
http://twitter.com/garymphoto Gary Mitchell
If you just look, it’s clear she’s standing on an apple box (or some outrageous 18-inch platforms, and the narrowest part of the dress is probably near her ankles.
http://twitter.com/JennQuercus Jennifer S Booher
It’s a McQueen dress, so it’s probably supposed to look oddly distorted.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1055821796 Vicky Val
|: this is over reacting. It’s from the house of McQuee, not to mention lady gaga’s image is an artistic one, the editing was most likely meant to look like that. Also, lady gaga has a lovely petite figure, shes actually only 5 feet or something in real life. factor in her 6″ shoes and that platform and this all makes a lot more sense.
John_Skinner
In the closing shots of the video with her and 2 guys back lit, you can see the actual shape of this dress.and although I do think there was some liquify going on here, I don’t think it’s a dramatic as people are making out. Besides, it was clearly a concept that the guy was trying to achieve and he liked what he produced.
Who am I to say different.
Cool image any box it comes out of.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=515251097 Pipe Zabala
Does anybody else thinks her face looks pasted on?
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1064904443 Tim McLaughlin
What percentage of fstoppers posts are about someone “going to too far?”
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_KGIHBUQPQNYO4DHTY233WCSDYQ Jacques
I would not say ‘ugly’, but rather unhappy. People who criticise other people for the purpose of painting them black reflects on how unhappy their are with their own lives.
The more happy people are with themselves, the less they find fault with things and the more they will see the beauty.
http://profile.yahoo.com/H3N2AAX42CFI5VF26MKMDYYKOE Nicholas
I think the final touches on the image works here, and is consistent with Lady Gaga’s look. The disproportionate body lines, made by the dress, is reminiscent of a Sam Keith drawing of a comic book character.
Glenn Marsh
When speaking of art or photography i don’t think you can ever go to “far”. opinions of what is good and what is not or too far or boring is neither correct or wrong. Stay positive.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Brooke-Mathews/1353031221 Brooke Mathews
it looks so awkward! but its appropriate because its Lady Gaga, were used to seeing her disproportionate. I don’t think thing like this are the industry standard because normal people don’t want to looks like this. And the public won’t be draw to strange looking figures.
http://www.facebook.com/michael.miller.5815 Michael Miller
Mert&Marcus are two people. They always shoot together under this name.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1167544520 Alex Pigeon
I’m not really seeing “barbie doll” proportions here. A little research (or reading the magazine) would have revealed that it is in fact a custom Marc Jacobs dress referencing Vogue’s first cover from 1892 when extreme proportions were the norm, and with a cursory knowledge of fashion it’s clearly a trumpet silhouette. That, plus a little trick known as angles, is probably how it happened.
I’m not saying that no liquifying has occurred, but if you’re going to try and call out a behemoth of respect and influence such as Vogue at least try and make some reasoned claims. I feel that this is another of many articles on Fstoppers lately that offers readers little to no practical information, a large deviation of Fstoppers from old, and serves only to bring more traffic.
http://www.facebook.com/ziazon Jason Lei
I believe it looks fine. Not everything needs to be portrayed as realistic. Seriously, people should have enough common sense these days to realise photographs are manipulated. I mean come on, it’s been happening since the birth of photography. And what says it wasn’t an artistic decision?
http://twitter.com/grafichouse Martin Ellard
is it me or does she look like a Quality Street !!!
http://twitter.com/JPGodwin John Godwin
More than how I feel about the retouch, I’d like to stop being asked how I feel about retouches.
This isn’t controversial, it’s not a talking point, it’s just a picture. A representation of a concept.
There have been a couple of dodgy ones in the last year or so, but that doesn’t mean every single manipulated shot on the cover of a fashion magazine is open to the same scrutiny, as if every issue has throngs of photographers sharply drawing in breath.
Rather than going on scare-monger every time there’s an extreme image in the media, how about we all ignore it, since we know that the person who retouched that image probably relies on that work to pay his bills.
We’re supposed to be a community here, yet for reasons I can’t fathom, some staff writers seem to demonise certain elements of the industry, without realising that they’re potentially contributing to the future demise of it.
http://twitter.com/JPGodwin John Godwin
http://fr.linkedin.com/pub/michael-marcopoulos/5/5b4/8aa
You aren’t so pretty yourself, bro, what’s up with the lazy eye?
Ralph Hightower
Lady Gaga is an HDR abomination. Her “cotton candy” hair makeup reminds me of Buckwheat on the Little Rascals when he gets scared.
ApexofMediocrity
+1
Jon-Mark Wiltshire
I think it’s looks cool, well stylized.
http://www.studiojulian.com/ Julian Jones
It’s fine, but it’s not the reason why i went out and bought it. It’s a very thick $7 issue with loads of imagery to study for my own personal work.
http://www.postlinearity.com gregorylent
cartoons … all fashion, film, celebrity, sports heros, when they are digitally dealt with, they become cartoons, simulacrums, approximations, “fake”.
we consume images, not reality.
same with the senses, back in the old days, but we didn’t know it then.
http://twitter.com/MJKauz Mark Kauzlarich
I don’t know, but I think its gone too far.
http://profile.yahoo.com/BYDFFDGZDMR4R6BWQRBRGE7F24 desiree
The retouchers, here, did make her much thinner than she appears to be in the video. The stomach and chest area are much more well defined than it appears to be in the video. Also, the knee area has been thinned. All this, it seems, to accentuate the shape of the dress. When I saw this on the stands I honestly thought “wow, either Gaga has lost weight or has been over retouched.” So, that’s my take. I admire fashion photographers like Peter Lindbergh who cringe every time their images are retouched/over-retouched by the mags. Thanks for the post!
http://twitter.com/Reactivestills Gary Martin
Very true, She is a fuckin asshole, How the world finds her interesting is beyond me.. Its torture listening to her in every clothing store, Supermarket etc. I can wait until she disappears.
http://www.facebook.com/kcolephoto Kristen Cole
Jeez. That was pretty harsh and unnecessary.

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