Brad Kroenig

>> For the 2011 Pirelli calendar, which launched in Moscow today, Karl Lagerfeld said that he produced “the visual version of Homer. I did with my camera what he did with his pen, although we understand that he probably didn't use a pen.” Lagerfeld gathered 15 female models, 5 male models, and Julianne Moore in his Paris studio back in April to produce 36 black and white images of deities from ancient Greece and Rome for the calendar. “I wanted to do something different. I looked at all the other calendars,” he explained, adding: “With such a concept and boys and girls like this, it was an easy job.”

Lagerfeld was surrounded by a cadre of the models featured for the Moscow launch, including Natasha Poly sporting a new brunette hair color. But who did he cast as whom? Julianne Moore plays Hera, Brad Kroenig poses as Zeus, Lara Stone gives her best Aphrodite, Jeneil Williams channels Hades, and Baptiste Giabiconi embodies the roles of both Narcissus and Apollo.

The rest of the cast includes: Bianca Balti (as a Bacchante), Elisa Sednaoui (Flora, Echo), Freja Beha Erichsen (Apollo, Pollux, Orpheus), Isabeli Fontana (a Bacchante), Magdalena Frackowiak (Athena, Estia), Anja Rubik (Hermes, Terpsichore), Abbey Lee Kershaw (Echo, Castor, Eurydice), Lakshmi Menon (a Bacchante), Heidi Mount (Aurora, Amphitrite), Erin Wasson (Ajax, a Bacchante), Natasha Poly (Melpomene), Daria Werbowy (Artemis, Penthesilea), Iris Strubegger (Athena), Sebastien Jondeau (Mars), Garret Neff (Bacchus), and Jake Davis (Achilles).

A peek at the calendar and launch below.

>> Tom Ford is currently filming his directorial debut, and Wednesday, Karl Lagerfeld will show his own directorial debut, based on Coco Chanel's early years.  Unlike Tom's feature film, Karl's film is only ten minutes — a length more fitting to kick off the showing of Chanel's Paris-Moscow collection in Paris.  The presentation was originally supposed to take place in Moscow, but Karl changed his mind after Russian customs "wanted to have the clothes three weeks in advance, which means we wouldn't have been ready and the situation seemed risky, so we cancelled."

Shot in a Paris studio in two days, Karl's film is inspired by Mack Sennett's flickering black-and-white silent slapstick movies with "spliced in newsreel footage of WWI because I think it's interesting to juxtapose fashion with the horrible images of the trenches."  Rather than cast extras — "they don't know how to touch the clothes" — Karl looked within his own posse to fill positions — muse Amanda Harlech and daughter Tallulah Ormsby-Gore as customer and model, Brad Kroenig as Chanel lover Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, and bodyguard Sebastien Jondeau as a Russian general.  For the role of Chanel, Karl went with Lithuanian model Edita Vilkeviciute — in character in the film stills below.
*image: source