In 2013, VICE Magazine published a fashion spread called ‘Last Words.’ The spread appeared in that year’s fiction issue and, with the issue having been ‘entirely dedicated to female writers, photographers, illustrators, painters, and other contributors’, it was fitting that the theme of the fashion spread was female authors.
Yet the magazine – the original channel in what is now a vast media house that includes a multi-website online presence, a publishing imprint, as well as film, a television show and a record label – didn’t become a cultural titan valued at well over a billion dollars in under 20 years by doing bog-standard aspirational fashion spreads: this was not Donna Tartt in Valentino, or Margaret Atwood in Comme des Garçons. This was ‘Sylvia Plath’ kneeling before an oven in designer clothing.
The theme of this fashion spread was female authors who have committed suicide. The authors’ dates of birth and death were captioned below the photos, along with the cause of death and, of course, what the model was wearing. The piece was roundly criticized for putting a filter of romance over very real tragedies (indeed, the historian Iris Chang had killed herself less than 10 years before) and VICE soon pulled the piece from its website, though the print version remained.
