Photography

The Pirelli Calendar

Izzy Ashton

Deputy Editor, BITE Creativebrief

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Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is a wonderfully mad work of fiction that has offered up many an Instagramable quote and birthday party theme. But the photographer Tim Walker has taken his interpretation in a different direction for the latest Pirelli calendar.

Walker has offered up an alternative, and diverse, twisted fairy-tale, inspired by John Tenniel’s original illustrations of Alice in Wonderland. The calendar features an eclectic cast, and one that is all black, including the supermodel Naomi Campbell and actor Lupita Nyong’o, who star alongside Whoopi Goldberg and RuPaul.

Historically, the Pirelli calendar, which launched in 1964, was about topless women posing to sell tyres for the brand. But it has, over the last few years, become a reflection of the cultural conversations of its time, even in some cases at the forefront of them.

Tim Walker follows in the photography footsteps of Peter Lindbergh and Annie Lebovitz, both of whom inspired many a discussion with their respective calendars that celebrated the accomplishments, and beauty, of influential women.

Walker’s feeling behind the calendar, which was styled by the incoming editor of British Vogue, Edward Enninful, was that “any girl…should be able to have their own fairy-tale.”

Indeed, as Carroll wrote, “Here we must run as fast as we can just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere, you must run twice as fast as that.” In today’s polarizing world, those words, written in 1865, couldn’t be more apt.

Visit the Pirelli website to find out more.

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