Marpessa Hennink

fashion_84 · March 16, 2012

Thanks :kiss:

spiral · March 21, 2012

Versace S/S 1992

spiral · March 21, 2012

Chanel S/S 1992

Parts 1 & 2

spiral · March 22, 2012

Part 3

fender · March 25, 2012

Spiral,i really like these images extracted from videos,perhaps i will use one for my next avi

fender · April 21, 2012

She was everywhere in those years! Thanks,Spiral :wave:

spiral · April 22, 2012

Here's some more

spiral · April 23, 2012

Karl Lagerfeld, A/W 1992

fender · May 3, 2012

Estetica n.277--2-1992 Armani ss92 :wave:

spiral · May 8, 2012

^I love Armani. :heart:

Marpessa attended last night's Costume Institute Gala at the Met museum in NYC.

spiral · May 10, 2012

Marpessa

by Rossella Locatelli

Among the 80s and 90s top models, the Dutch model Marpessa plays a particular role, thanks to her extrovert personality and her unusual beauty

If it is true that the name of a person holds part of his destiny, then to be called Marpessa, like the nymph disputed between the god Apollo and the warrior Idas, or like the Afro-American actress turned by Marcel Camus into the carioca Eurydice of the Black Orpheus, means having an aura of beauty that is almost mythic. This is the case of Marpessa Hennink, which entered the Olympus of the top models between the middle 80s and the early 90s. She was born in Amsterdam from Dutch parents, and her father had origins from Suriname; at 16 years old she decided to begin her career as a model. Her strong will and her daredevil personality, that mirrored her unique way of walking, don’t let her give up when Eileen Ford, pioneer of the model management that passed by the Dutch city for some castings, rejects her.

On the contrary, she is much more convinced that her winner hands-down actually are her atypical beauty, those exotic traits and that perfect body, almost a Mediterranean body, although she has no origins and no explosive shapes that are typical of some of its stereotypes. She arrives in Milan during the early 80s, during the real golden age of the Italian prêt-à-porter, and agencies notice her straight away. Her audacious and fun walk, with a well balanced dose of sensuality, becomes her distinctive feature. From then on, she starts posing for some masters of photography and to walk the runaway for the big names of fashion, both Italian and foreigner ones: Chanel, Christian Dior, Valentino, Gianfranco Ferré, Calvin Klein, Gianni Versace and Dolce & Gabbana, just to name a few. She is connected to Gianni Versace by a great esteem, and the awareness that walking the runaway for him in the early 90s inevitably coincides with her consecration as a top model. For Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, Marpessa is more than a model; she is a muse and a friend. They met in 1985 and they together give rise to a little piece of history of the fashion photography. The advertisement campaign Dolce & Gabbana for the 1987/88 autumn/winter collection shows Marpessa shot by the Sicilian photographer Ferdinando Scianna, the only Italian photographer working for the Magnum agency, which works for the first time on a fashion shooting.

The result is memorable; the narrating content of those images is so “recognizable” because it is based on the neo-realistic cinema and on the references to the Italian-style comedy that finds in this Dutch girl a perfect protagonist role. After so many successes, Marpessa today lives with her daughter in Ibiza. She shows up for news stories only in a few, selected occasions, when the closest friends call her. She is very present in the social media, and always lives up to her reputation of a clever and helpful woman, by giving her support to some social engagement campaigns, such as the fight against homophobia and every other type of discrimination, and the project supporting safe motherhood, called Every Mother Counts, and founded by her friend Christy Turlington. Her intentional absence from the runaways allowed her to study more photography and interior design, her two passions that she turned into profession with time.

source