Body Language: The Enduring Appeal of the Fashion Pose

Rocha toyed with the project in 2011 in a video for artist Jeremy Kost where she performed 50 poses in 30 seconds. The clip went viral, followed by 19 Jumping Poses by Tony Kim for Target in 2012.

In 2007, Canadian model Coco Rocha opened Jean Paul Gaultier’s highlands-inspired winter collection, emerging from green smoke performing a high-octane Irish jig. American Vogue named it a 'Coco Moment', propelling the 19-year-old to supermodel status. Blurring the worlds of fashion and dance, her expressive body language quickly gained her the moniker "Queen of Pose", and her range of curves and contorted twists have featured in advertising campaigns for the likes of Chanel, Longchamp, Dolce & Gabanna and Christian Dior.

The alphabet of Coco Rocha’s body movement is presented in a new book photographed by Steven Sebring titled The Study of Pose: 1,000 Poses by Coca Rocha [fig. 1],  featuring Rocha bent in 1,000 different angles. Standing against a minimalist black background, at times she resembles a Renaissance sculpture – unsurprising given that Sebring and Rocha drew inspiration from the languid stance of early posers, Botticelli's Venus or Michelangelo's David.

More recently, Zosia Mamet mimicked a series of Poses from Fashion Media [fig. 2] for Leanne Shapton, published in a new book, Women in Clothes. It's a briliantly simple idea – Mamet dressed in a unitard, working the somewhat bizarre poses exhibited by models for fashion magazines such as Vogue, Dazed & Confused and The Gentlewoman.

"The art of the pose is one that dates back centuries"

The art of the pose, or “posturing” as Shapton refers to it, is one that dates back centuries. Sebring and Rocha took inspiration from Eadweard Muybridge’s The Human Figure in Motion [fig.3], a 1907 study of over 4,000 photographs of varying positions, now thought of as an artist's essential for sketching the human form. Shapton herself was inspired by the ordered grids of German artist Hans-Peter Feldmann, known for his collected, categorical approach to art-making.

Many models are known by their silhouette – Brigitte Bardot’s exaggerated crossed legs, Twiggy's knee-lunge, Madonna’s ‘In Vogue’ face frame – and many fashion poses are definitive of an era, from Salvador Dalí's early ballerina silhouettes to Jean Shrimpton limbs akimbo throughout the 1960s or German supermodel Veruschka’s elongated leaps.

Grace Jones, under the guidance of Jean-Paul Goude, challenged the boundaries of the fashion pose during the 70s and 80s with her androgynous and avant-garde contortions, in particular her famous arabesque pose for her Island Life album cover in 1985 [fig.4]. Goude admitted that the image was digitally adjusted as Grace herself was unable to perform the complex move. “Unless you are extraordinarily supple, you cannot do this arabesque,” he explained. “The main point is that Grace couldn’t do it, and that’s the basis of my entire work: creating a credible illusion.”

In 1993, Sassy magazine – now a cult piece of 90s nostalgia — published Dopey Poses [fig.5], an editorial which poked fun at unrealistic model postures, with ironic titles including "The Hip Dysplasia” and “The Victoria’s Secret Special.”

In 2014, for better or for worse, the body language of fashion is more influential than ever. Generation Selfie and the drive for instant imagery has birthed a catalogue of self-shot photography that has taken the fashion pose onto the street. Coco Rocha’s new book somehow walks the line between our new thirst for imagery and Jean Paul Goude’s “credible illusion," whilst reaffirming society's consuming interest in the ever-transformative fashion pose.

The Study of Pose: 1,000 poses by Coco Rocha is out now, published by Harper Collins

Words by Laura Bradley and Mhairi Graham

Last year, twenty years on since the original article, i-D Magazine printed its own spoof parody entitled Fashion Poses [fig. 6] featuring Cara Delevingne in compromising positions including “Best In Show” and “White Girls Can’t Vogue.” The new A/W14 issue of The Gentlewoman unpicks The Language of Posing [fig.7], such as "The Crossed-Arm Pose" or "The Leaning In Pose", styled by Charlotte Collet and photographed by Andreas Larsson. Both stories are typical of each magazine's aesthetic and approach.

Another artist to mock the fashion pose is Yolanda Dominguez, who published a series of work in 2011 directly criticising society's attitude towards modelling. "A group of real women transfer these poses to daily scenes," she wrote. The collection includes a woman flexed across a park bench, or poised outside a museum queue.