Making a scene
He's the undisputed top dog when it comes to fashion photography, and now Mario Testino is cultivating contacts - while dancing the night away - in the mainland. Mark Graham reports
Midnight has come and gone at the swishest, most star-studded fashion party Beijing has ever seen, and the tuxedoed and ballgown-clad celebrity guests are jabbing at their phones to summon limousines to take them home.
But the oldest VIP in the house - a man who, with the turn of the hour, has entered his 59th year - is merely limbering up for some serious, early-hours moving, grooving and schmoozing. He stands surrounded by a phalanx of glamorous models young enough to be - whisper it - his grandchildren.
Party animal though he may be - he's seen at all the swankiest dos, wherever in the world they may be - it is clear that Mario Testino keeps his business antennae on at all times.
As he shakes hands, poses for pictures and cracks wise over the course of cocktails, dinner and a post-banquet party, no opportunity is missed to remind people that he is the best - and most in-demand - photographer in the fickle world of fashion. Arrogant-sounding words, granted, but with the arrogance diluted somewhat by trademark Testino shrugs and smiles.
This three-day series of parties marking Vogue China's seventh anniversary, and attended by all the bigwigs from all the major fashion houses, offers a golden chance to catch up with long-standing contacts and tap potential clients in the fast growing mainland luxury market.
Testino did not get to the top of the fashion-photography pile and become lodged there, seemingly immovable, by being lackadaisical about business and cultivating allies, nor indeed by trying to be too radical or avant garde. Although his work invariably involves the creation of beautiful, often ethereal, images, contract negotiation is another matter altogether: Testino is an unapologetic pragmatist, who fully understands the relationship between fashion brands and the magazines that display their wares.
In short, commercial appeal to the maximum number of people is always the priority: editors and advertisers who want a mean and moody production from a temperamental artiste are unlikely to book Testino, whose oeuvre is generally smiley, colourful and upbeat.