Found a photograph in my archives this morning – one of Guy's more provocative pieces for Roland Pierre, circa 1983. The brand never made it past the fall collections, but Bourdin's vision of desire? That's eternal.
I remember when he first showed me this shot at Le Grand Véfour. Guy had that way of making every lunch feel like a conspiracy. "Roland wants to sell shoes," he said, Gauloises smoke curling around his Hasselblad, "but we're selling the promise of where they might lead."
The genius of Bourdin was never in the obvious. While Helmut Newton was busy with his Amazons in Saint-Tropez, Guy was finding eroticism in the spaces between moments. A pink-tiled bathroom, stilettos scattered like evidence – it's a crime scene where the only victim is inhibition.
Roland Pierre understood this when they hired him. Fresh from his Charles Jourdan triumph, Bourdin was rewriting the language of luxury advertising. Every campaign was a film noir in a single frame. That Roland Pierre series? Pure Bourdin at his peak: dangerous curves, dangerous women, dangerous suggestions.
Looking at it now, two years later, I see everything we're building with Dial Tone. The digital age doesn't need more speed – it needs more anticipation. Every message should be like those scattered shoes, a breadcrumb trail leading somewhere intriguing but never obvious.
Between my morning espresso at Sant Ambroeus and midnight martini at Bemelmans, I've been thinking about Guy's philosophy. "The art," he told me once at Café de Flore, "is knowing exactly how much to withhold."
That's the recipe we're following at Dial Tone. Equal parts mystery and revelation, served with a twist of possibility.
-AK
[Transmitted from Bemelmans Bar, where the martinis are as dry as Guy's wit]