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If Beverly Hills has a Main Street, it’s Rodeo Drive—three blocks of palm trees and designer boutiques with names like Armani, Gucci, and Louis Vuitton. Impossibly expensive cars—Ferraris, Rolls-Royces, Lamborghinis—cruise down the strip. Paparazzi stalk red carpets and limousines.
From the balcony of a brand new Chanel Boutique one evening this past December, Minneapolis photographer Alec Soth, an invited guest at the store’s glamorous opening party, surveys this scene, clad in a black blazer and black slacks he bought with the help of an former intern—”a real fashionable dude.”
Inside, in an oversized dressing room intended for the private shopping of the elite, hang three large photographs of a Paris fashion show snapped by Soth. Mingling throughout the store are Hollywood starlets (Hilary Duff, Angie Harmon) with flawless bodies wrapped tight in extravagant clothes. Standing near Soth on the balcony is the young actor Chris Klein (American Pie). It occurs to Soth that Klein’s suit looks much better than his own does.
Check it out here. Via Tim Gruber via APAD.