Davide Sorrenti, King of Heroin Chic

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When his death was reported in the New York Times in an article titled “A Death Tarnishes the Heroin Look’” (Spindler 1997) Davide Sorrenti became inextricably tied to heroin chic.  The link was reinforced when, apparently inspired by the NYT article, Clinton called out the fashion industry in his remarks to the United States Conference of Mayors.  Ignoring major changes in the availability of cheap, pure, snortable heroin in the 90s, Clinton blamed media images that glamorized addiction for the increased use of heroin by high school and college students. He said that, “images projected in fashion photos in the last few years have made heroin addiction seem glamorous and sexy and cool,” and in a specific reference to Davide Sorrenti’s death, added, “And if some of the people in those images start to die now, it’s become obvious that that is not true.”

Recently, there has been renewed interest in heroin chic, and with it, an interest in Davide Sorrenti, whose name is so linked to the end of heroin chic, that his relatively minor contribution to 90s fashion photography gets greatly exaggerated.  I think he could better be described as a street style photographer who was documenting the life of models (including his girlfriend, James King) at a time when heroin use amongst models was rampant (particularly in New York, where snortable heroin was readily available). While that might be enough to brand him as a purveyor of heroin chic to some, the definition of “heroin chic” can be slippery and, in some cases, seems to expand to encompass all of 90s fashion photography.

I would consider heroin chic to be fashion images of people who look like they use heroin and who make heroin seem appealing.  While, each person would have a different idea of what they find attractive, there were certain markers of heroin chic: pale, shiny skin; dark circles under her eyes; a slack-mouth look of unfocused longing.  Sometimes the dark circles and the shiny skin were a special effect created with makeup, and sometimes they were the result of not using professional makeup and lighting (which, in more conventional fashion photography, can cover up a multitude of sins). Exactly because grainy available-light photos would give anyone circles under their eyes, another movement in 90s photography – dirty realism, which used a pseudo-documentary style, with no retouching, no studio lighting, DIY makeup and hair – is often confused with heroin chic.

“Dirty realism” photos were taken by former models (Corinne Day, Mario Sorrenti) and other young outsiders (David Sims, Glen Luchford, Juergen Teller) and featured in British lifestyle magazines (i-D, The Face and Dazed and Confused).  The artists blurred the line between photojournalism and fashion editorials.  “Their motivation was to imbue their representation of fashion with a new and exciting notion of imaginative consumers who incorporated fashion into their own lives.” (Cotton 2000).

In a media climate that prioritized rawness and authenticity over polish (e.g. the elevation of Gangsta Rap, Grunge, Alternative Music to pop status), it is not surprising that this “outsider” photography was snapped up as the next new thing.  In 1992, Calvin Klein commissioned Mario Sorrenti, a model and amateur photographer, to take pictures of Mario’s then girlfriend, fellow model Kate Moss, for the Obsession campaign (Sischy 1999).  Unretouched, black and white, and taken without makeup, blow dryers or studio lighting, the pictures are reminiscent of a student art project.  The photos themselves are not really fashion photography – they employ none of the technology of fashion and the only product featured (cologne) is invisible – but since they are pictures of a model printed in fashion magazines, they have become fashion photography.  At 18, without the glamor of makeup, lights and portrait lenses, Kate Moss looks unbearably young, skinny and fragile, but instead of highlighting the artificiality of Moss’s more conventional modeling work, Mario’s photos became the focus of public outrage about promotion of eating disorders and pedophelia, and, by 1994, what was starting to be called “drug chic.” (Gabriel 1994, Gandee 1994)

Between 1992 and 1997, Mario Sorrenti produced a number of fashion editorials (for The Face, Madmoiselle, Harper’s and Queen, Glamour France, Vogue Italia, W, Harper’s Bazaar) while retaining the dirty realism DIY aesthetic.  Many of his pictures are black and white and his color photos (Waking Dream, 1996; Turn the Dark On, 1996; Painted Ladies, 1996; Deep Thoughts, 1997; The Tee Zone, 1997) tend to have non-conventional lighting (dim and off-color, creating deep shadows that partially obscure the models’ faces and bodies).  To me, the color editorials, and particularly “Deep Thoughts” have the kind of strangeness and melancholy that came to be associated with heroin chic.  They are not purely “dirty realism”, since there is no way they could be seen as photojournalistic or documentary (unless they are meant to be documenting a dim room full of ballet dancers with food-poisoning).

Meanwhile, by 1996, Mario’s younger brother, Davide, was just starting to get into photography.  Better known as a “prep school gangster” (Sales 1996) and a member of the SKE crew (Sales 1998), Davide’s first work to be published focused on skating, smoking blunts, tagging and how cool he and his friends were (Chu 1998).

In 1996, he started dating model James King, and his photos of her (like his brother’s early pictures of Kate Moss) were a kind of de facto fashion photography, though, again, without the technical skills of traditional fashion photography.  It is extremely hard to find his published work, but the fashion work that is available is evocative but technically flawed – poor lighting; weird color casts; deep, disfiguring shadows.  Like Mario’s work it is not “dirty realism” and not really “heroin chic,” but experimental photography that somehow briefly made it into the mainstream.

His association with heroin chic, however, was inevitable after his much publicized overdose death. According to his friend (and son of i-D editor Terry Jones) Matt Jones, “Yes, I guess he did slightly see the glamorous side. … He also saw the real side of it. And he glamorized it himself, which is the sad thing.’ (Spindler 1997). Some of the models he photographed, like James King and Amy Wesson, were becoming notorious for their own drug problems, and, even in pictures with no obvious references to drugs, his lo-tech photography style fit squarely into the popular conception of heroin chic. His last editorial (moody, murky pictures of actress Jade Malle) (Detour, March 1997) was printed back-to-back with an editorial making fun of the excesses of heroin chic (with models posed and made-up like overdose victims). The joke was lost on Amy Spindler, and the whole issue of Detour became an example of the grotesque penetration of heroin chic into the popular media.

Davide Sorrenti’s most blatant heroin chic image was an ad for the Japanese label Hysteric Glamour, a black and white photo of James King hunched over on a sofa, picking at her leggings, in front of posters of iconic musicians whose deaths were drug-related (Kurt Cobain, Sid Vicious, Jerry Garcia). King has said that the photo was meant as satire (Das 2009), but it didn’t help that James King was already associated with heroin chic. Nan Goldin (a strong influence on Davide) (Chu 1998) had also photographed James King in 1995 and 1996 and these pictures (with shiny skin, dark circles under the eyes, and a constant cigarette) intentionally or unintentionally fit the heroin chic model so perfectly that, when her boyfriend died of an overdose less than a year later, the two of them became the king and queen of heroin chic.

I found many of these references through Joshua Hastings’ blog (written while he was a student in Contemporary Media Practice at University of Westminster) 

Clinton, William J. “Remarks to the United States Conference of Mayors.” May 21, 1997

Cotton, Charlotte, ed. Imperfect Beauty: The Making of Contemporary Fashion Photographs” V&A Publications, London, 2000.

Chu, Simon. “Fatal Exposure” BBC2 1998 (transcript)

Das, Lina. “Return of the King” London Evening Standard March 16, 2009

GABRIEL, TRIP “Fast-Lane Killer: A special report.; Heroin Finds a New Market Along Cutting Edge of Style,” New York Times May 08, 1994

Gandee, Charles. “Under the Influence” US Vogue, March 1994

Sales, Nancy Jo. “Teenage Gangsters” New York Magazine. December 16, 1996

Sales, Nancy Jo. “Caution: These Kids Are About to Blow Up” New York Magazine. August 24, 1998

Sischy, Ingrid. Interview with Kate Moss. Interview March 1999

Woodward, Richard B. “Whither Fashion Photography?” June 8, 1997

(You can also contact me for PDFs of these articles.)