This is a continuation of the series of stories of Peter Banks and his family. It started with Country Life, continued with Up T'Smoke and A Surface Problem. The characters are the same; while it helps to have read the earlier stories, it is not necessary to have done so to understand this one.
Nobody under the age of 18 is involved in sexual activity
Hello, I am Marcus de Vere. I have always been interested in photography.
In senior school we had a 'Camera Club'. It was run by the physics teacher who explained the basics of cameras and the fundamentals of black and white film processing. He taught us every Thursday for an hour after school. I was fascinated.
There were maybe a dozen or fifteen of us in the club and we practiced using the simple equipment. It belonged to the school and we used it mainly in the little darkroom off the physics lab, often during the lunch break. The club had been going for several years and had accumulated bits of equipment. We were able to load cut film into casettes, in the dark of course. Then after taking pictures we would transfer the film into a tank for developing and fixing, followed by contact prints and some enlargements.
One Easter my Dad gave me his old Leica M3. I didn't realize at the time how good a camera it was. In the following two years I became reasonably proficient and ended up taking pictures for the school magazine, mainly team photos and sports day activities. A friend took some of the squash and swim teams that I was in but I missed the fencing photo.
More about sports at school. At 5' 11" and 175 lb I was not competitive for the First XV Rugby so I played on the wing in the seconds. Only 'The Firsts' got their picture in the magazine. Cricket and field hockey were not to my taste: I swam - distance - moderately well, and played on the school 'second-6' squash team. I enjoyed fencing and was quite good, but I could never beat Christophe: he went on to represent France in the Olympics!
So I was a competitor but not in team sports. Not like my sister Sophie's husband Peter: we were at Junior School together for a year before I was sent to Prep School. Peter was 6' 2" and 210 lb and played on the national schoolboys' rugby team. A hard man!
Up at Oxford I messed about for a while, finding my feet. I read PPE in college and took a joint Architecture degree at Oxford Brookes. I started a D.Phil. in Architectural History but decided on the practical side with an ARIBA, all the while keeping an interest in photography. I got a job in architecture with Sir Thomas Percival Partnership - apparently Sir Tom was in The Guards with Dad - and for a while I enjoyed the architecture work. But I found myself taking evening courses in photography. In the end I asked Sir Thomas for a leave of absence to get the photography out of my blood. I was a 'loner' with no commitments. I went out occasionally with a crowd of guys and girls, usually pals from Oxford who chose to go out as a group. Sometimes to a show, sometimes just for a drink and dancing. Anywhere from half a dozen of is to maybe 15 or so, but it got a bit expensive without independent funding and Dad was having some difficulties. So I had no serious girlfriend, and I needed to know if I could make a living doing what I really wanted to do: photography.
So I set up shop and advertised locally, also spreading the word through my, admittedly small, group of friends. While I was still with Sir Tom I started doing weddings and some free-lance work, hawking my shots to newspapers and anyone who would buy. I had a reasonable computer with CadCam for building work and I learned Adobe Photoshop quite quickly. Colour work I sent off for professional printing but I had a small darkroom in my spare room for black and white 'wet chemistry' work: my 'artsy' stuff.
Interest was slow taking off. I was saved by the number of wedding albums I covered, from March through to October. It was good work, quite lucrative, but in time it became bit repetitive. Then one day the daughter of one of Dad's friends asked if I could do an 'artistic folio' for her: nudes and some suggestive poses. I was hesitant: was I risking my reputation before I had made it? I agreed but I quoted an exorbitant price. She agreed - she wasn't paying!
Slowly my client base grew and along with it, my reputation. I did more and more commercial work and some fashion stills for famous skin-care products. Some models were friendly, some aloof, and some totally ignored me. Occasionally I got some positive feedback from the company artistic director that my work was good or what they were looking for. But that really only made sense if I got a call-back or another contract. I was beginning to get a feel for how that world worked.
Milan and Paris fashion weeks are always the major shows on the European fashion circuit. London comes much further down the list but the fashion houses usually show up to give a preview of what to expect later in the season in North America. Of course, the major attraction is on the runway where the models strut the newest of the designer's imagination, but there were fashion shoots, TV clips, interviews, cocktail parties and a host of other social gatherings.
The social life is busy but the performers all know each other. Property managers, designers, make-up people, models, seamstresses all mix freely though there is a hierarchy with designers and models at the top. Occasionally someone new arrives and people retire, gracefully or otherwise. The new arrivals take time to get to know the others and find their place in the hierarchy. The major houses have their primary models and any number of freelancers who fill in, depending on the number of outfits in the show and how long it takes to change clothing.
Many of the models are married, often with children, and lead normal family lives. They are well organized and will travel to the fashion week locales in good time to complete their assignments, then return home to their families. Single models may share accommodation, often at hotels or apartments owned or paid for by their fashion house. Sometimes models from different houses will share: there are no hard-and-fast rule. They can organize themselves and of course their companies pick up the charges.
Katya Ulsen is one of the top two models for Yves St Laurent. She had been signed as a 17-year-old when in Paris, living with her cousin Anna, then a student teacher at the Sorbonne. They were single daughters of single sisters who were translators originally from Chisinau, Moldova. One worked for the NATO, then the UN, the other for the EU.
Anna was attractive, about 5' 6", and very bright. Over the years she had acquired a teaching degree (Sorbonne), a nursing diploma, an MB, ChB (Guy's Hospital) and a specialty in Medical Genetics in Internal Medicine (Stanford). She and Katya shared an apartment in Palo Alta near San Jose. Anna lives there and works in the Stanford University Hospital while Katya travels about three weeks of each month. Even though Anna is well paid as a medical specialist, YSL still pays for the apartment.
Katya was a classical beauty: about 5' 9" and long platinum blonde hair, slim, high cheekbones with a small nose, slightly almond-shaped eyes and generous lips. Quite kissable I thought, in fact a real beauty.
The major houses have their in-house photographers who follow the circus during the season. Phillippe Marchant had been with Yves St Laurent for many years. He was admired and respected for his insight into the designers' interpretations and his careful, though sometimes no longer avant-garde, work.
