Interview

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In the 1970s, Guy Bourdin's mysterious, seductive photographs turned French Vogue into a must for everyone turned on by fashion. His style is so associated with that decade it's hard to imagine that he did his first shoots for Vogue way back in 1955 and was once a protégé of Man Ray. Paris department store Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche  reveals another side of Bourdin's imagery in "Guy Bourdin,  ses films," a collection of 15 shorts he took from the 1960s to 1980  projected randomly in a walk-through theater in the round.  The show, on through October 29, offers a sumptuous dive into Bourdin's world from his idealized nudes to snippets filmed after fashion shoots and random clips of children. Photographer and former Bourdin model Ellen von Unwerth appears in the show and said she was surprised. "I looked and thought, ‘oh who's that girl, she seems familiar,' before I realized it was me," she said.  On Sunday evening, the store invited the fashion crowd for a private view. Alber Elbaz, W's Dennis Freedman, Martine Sitbon and Marc Ascoli, fashion curator Lydia Kamitsis and Greek designer Yiorgos Eleftheriades, stylist Sascha Lilic and Liz Goldwyn, who recently did the windows and screened her films for the store's homage of Los Angeles, were on hand. And for the short space of an evening the grinding wheels of the fashion machine seemed far, far away.