PIXEL PERFECT

THE WORLD OF FASHION

For a charity auction a few years back, the photographer Patrick Demarchelier donated a private portrait session. The lot sold, for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, to the wife of a very rich man. It was her wish to pose on the couples yacht. I call her, I say, I come to your yacht at sunset, I take your picture, Demarchelier recalled not long ago. He took a dinghy to the larger boat, where he was greeted by the woman, who, to his surprise, was not wearing any clothes. I want a picture that will excite my husband, she said. Capturing such an image, by Demarcheliers reckoning, proved to be difficult. I cannot take good picture, he said. Short legs, so much done to her face it was flat. Demarchelier finished the sitting and wondered what to do. Eventually, he picked up the phone: I call Pascal. Make her legs long! Pascal Dangin is the premier retoucher of fashion photographs. Art directors and admen call him when they want someone who looks less than great to look great, someone who looks great to look amazing, or someone who looks amazing alreadywhether by dint of DNA or MACto look, as is the mode, superhuman. (Christy Turlington, for the record, needs the least help.) In the March issue of Vogue Dangin tweaked a hundred and forty-four images: a hundred and seven advertisements (Este Lauder, Gucci, Dior, etc.), thirty-six fashion pictures, and the cover, featuring Drew Barrymore. To keep track of his clients, he assigns three-letter rubrics, like airport codes. Click on the current-jobs menu on his computer: AFR (Air France), AMX (American Express), BAL (Balenciaga), DSN (Disney), LUV (Louis Vuitton), TFY (Tiffany & Co.), VIC (Victorias Secret). Vanity Fair, W, Harpers Bazaar, Allure, French Vogue, Italian Vogue, V, and the Times Magazine, among others, also use Dangin. Many photographers, including Annie Leibovitz, Steven Meisel, Craig McDean, Mario Sorrenti, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, and Philip-Lorca diCorcia, rarely work with anyone else. Around thirty celebrities keep him on retainer, in order to insure that any portrait of them that appears in any outlet passes through his shop, to be scrubbed of crows-feet and stray hairs. Dangins company, Box Studios, has eighty employees and occupies a four-story warehouse in the meatpacking district. I have Patrick! an assistant to Miranda Priestly, the editor of Runway, exclaims in The Devil Wears Prada, but her real-life counterparts probably log as much time speed-dialling Pascal.

PASCAL DANGINS VIRTUAL REALITY. PHOTOGRAPH BY MERT ALAS BY LAUREN COLLINS