Maripol: Little Red Riding Hood
Damiani, 252 pages, 2010
I am a sucker for books like this, with its (well-designed) scrapbook style that incorporates lots of bits and pieces of a person’s life. I’m not talking about scraps of paper with bits of cheesy poetry, rather pages of Polaroids, fashion sketches, notations and images that give readers a glimpse into creative process and an active social life.
Maripol: Little Red Riding Hood satisfies in all respects. There are even a few uses of die-cuts, opaque vellum and smaller books bound within the larger one, all things that get me every time.
There’s little text and the conversation with designer Marc Jacobs that closes the book is the least insightful or interesting part, but thankfully Maripol herself is. The Morrocan/French New York-based stylist and jewelry designer’s book is a mish-mash of memories and a visual treasure trove for anyone curious about downtown New York style in the late 1970s through the 1980s.
Maripol is perhaps best known as the creative director of Fiorucci and the stylist who dressed Madonna in her Like a Virgin phase, in lace bustiers, layers of crosses and rubber bracelets up the arms. (Madonna fans will delight in Maripol’s original sketches for music video looks and assorted Madonna-related ephemera.) But alongside Madonna, there are plenty of candid looks at punk model Edwidge, Grace Jones, Andy Warhol, artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, Debbie Harry (Maripol styled one of my favourite Blondie album covers, Parallel Lines), and so many more. One could spend hours poring over the Polaroids, trying to identify everyone.
The book is slickly designed with little white space and tons of colour and this suits the dense content. The carefully haphazard look syncs with Maripol’s primarily visual story of New York in the late-‘70s and 1980s. It’s the New York we all dream of, when the city was dirty, studio space was cheap and everyone knew everyone else. The minimal writing gives context to this time in Maripol’s life and along with the images portrays at its core, a sense of artist camaraderie in the New York scene.
For fans of this era, it’s enough to leave you both inspired and a little jealous.
