mario testino

>> In February, Kate Moss spent five days in both Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo with Mario Testino, shooting for Vogue Brazil's hefty 36th anniversary edition. "We worked the whole time," she told Vogue UK right after the trip. "We shot 60 pages for the magazine. It was a lot. I had Lila with me and I thought it would be more of a holiday, Mario usually finishes quite early, but not this time."

Testino captured her opposite Brazilian symbols of his choice — including architect Oscar Niemeyer, soccer star Pele, actors Rodrigo Santoro and Marcio Garcia, and model Mayana Moura. One location of choice was Rio's Copacabana Palace, where Testino had Moss posing in the hotel's spa and kitchen during working hours. The 508-page edition, which features Moss nude on the cover, hits newsstands May 2.

>> Gareth Pugh has come a long way from living in a squat house in 2005. The road hasn't been an easy one, however, he tells Vice in its new Style Issue: "We didn’t sell anything from the poodle or gimp shows — nothing until the fourth or fifth show. My first show was such a last-minute thing. I was only really thinking about the show and not selling stuff afterward. But once you start showing, you’re on the treadmill and have to carry on." Even a couple of years ago, he says, "There was a point, right before a show, when I barely had enough money to get my team over to Paris."

But now, Pugh is definitely starting to consider the financial aspect of his brand (and perhaps explains why he leans toward short films in place of runway shows): "At the moment I feel very much between a rock and a hard place. People expect an amazing show, but in order to do that in Paris you have to sell a lot of clothes, which maybe means people have to be able to imagine the clothes on hangers."

More from Pugh in Vice:

On why he opened his first store in Hong Kong: "Rick Owens’s wife, Michelle Lamy [Pugh's backer], thinks moneyed Chinese women like to look very chic, like avant-garde punks. I just make more sense over there. In America I’m seen as a little bit niche and weird."

On his relationship with Rick Owens: "I’m closer to his wife, Michelle. He always describes himself as the distant, stern father figure and she is like the overgenerous mother. She’s very critical about what I do, which I like. It’s good to have someone who doesn’t always give you unadulterated praise."

On his strangest fashion industry experiences: "Driving to the Palace of Versailles with Jeremy Scott, Suzy Menkes, Jefferson Hack, and Anouck Lepere was pretty funny. Everyone wanted to see this Jeff Koons exhibition — Anouck tried to climb the fence, Jefferson got into a fight with a security guard, and Suzy Menkes was taking pictures. That was weird. Oh, and the time I’d booked my housemates a holiday in Gran Canaria but got flown to New York to shoot with Mario Testino. I ended up at the Met Ball afterward and found myself having a fag with Christian Slater in the toilets while David Beckham took a piss at the urinal. The toilets there are a real superstar clusterf*ck. I just couldn’t work out why I was there."

On the clothes he wears: "I never buy clothes, so I don’t really have a choice when it comes to what I wear. I am very lucky to be able to pull a lot of Rick Owens and steal some of my stuff from the factory. (I have to steal my own samples [because] I don’t get a personal order quota. It’s a license.) But other than that I buy H&M hoodies and Topshop jeans."

On why he doesn't use much color: "The designs are more about the whole thing rather than the details, and if I were to do the big shapes I do, color would maybe be too much. Pink or red would push it all over the edge."

>> During couture, Emmanuelle Alt hinted that Vogue Paris under her direction would be "the same, but different"; Vogue's Mark Holgate got her to expand a little more on her vision for the magazine:

“I want to keep the quality, the photographers we work with — David [Sims], Mert and Marcus, Mario [Testino], and Bruce Weber. I don’t think there should be radical changes. The magazine should still be chic and sophisticated. It’s a bit like buying an apartment: Before you move in, you have all these plans of what you are going to do, but then you get there, and you realize it is better to spend time living in it, and transforming it over time. I’d like there to be more beauty trends; there was so much of that in Vogue back in the eighties. More French girls, more French lifestyle. And I am going to keep shooting for the magazine — hopefully a story every issue." She adds: "I always want a relationship with reality: nothing too sexy, or provocative, or fashion victim. We are French — we can show smoking, nudity. We have no boundaries, and it can be good to have them."

As for her position on celebrity covers: “We don’t have a systematic point of view on it. But here in France we are back in a much more glamorous time. French actresses were respected, but not so evidently in the fashion world. Now we have Marion Cotillard, Charlotte Gainsbourg. I’d be very happy to put an actress on the cover if she is the right girl.” And her model favorites are no surprise: “Daria [Werbowy] is the girl I work with the most. She has a natural, strong beauty. You can put her in a white tee and she will make it look fantastic. I like Kate [Moss] too, because she cares about clothes. Most models don’t care what you put them in, they just play the game.”