In his groundbreaking advertising for Benetton and as editor-in-chief of COLORS magazine, Oliviero Toscani was responsible for some of the most recognisable – and controversial – visuals of the past 40 years.
Text by Tom Ridgway
A selection of COLORS covers. Courtesy Benetton Group
I was hired by COLORS in early 1996. The magazine, funded by Benetton, had been founded five years before by legendary New York designer Tibor Kalman and Oliviero Toscani. Kalman often described it as “a mix of National Geographic and Life on acid” and our editorial mission was to explore the world as if we were aliens. Each issue would investigate a theme employing a global network of correspondents and often using objects to tease out wider symbolic and cultural meaning. It was a sort of Barthesian anthropology of the quotidian; it was also a dream job. Except when Oliviero would come to the office. He scared me witless, not only because he could get really angry, really quickly, but also because he felt dangerous. A total punk paradox, he was a man with a genuine no-future-don’t-give-a-shit attitude who produced content that did seem to care. He revelled in provocation, taking a genuine, impish pleasure in pissing everybody off (serious French journalists were a favourite target), in the name of bringing serious issues to a wider public that often didn’t want to listen. His mission may have been to épater les bourgeois, but wasn’t gratuitous. He brought to it a social purpose, like a single-minded teenager armed with a multinational’s ad budget. And the provocation worked. More times than I care to remember I found myself reluctantly defending Toscani. Yes, the ad campaigns are possibly cynical, I would say back then, yes, they are also about selling jumpers, but on the other hand, name another brand using its advertising budget to raise awareness of anything other than its products. There were none – and over 25 years later, not one has approached the joyously committed, weirdly moral nihilism that Toscani brought to the world. ◉
Oliviero Toscani, “Globes”, 1986. Courtesy Benetton Group
Oliviero Toscani, “Blanket”, 1990. Courtesy Benetton Group
Oliviero Toscani, “Newborn baby”, 1991. Courtesy Benetton Group
Oliviero Toscani, “Flags”, 1985. Courtesy Benetton Group
Oliviero Toscani, “Priest and nun”, 1991. Courtesy Benetton Group
Therese Frare, “AIDS – David Kirby”, 1992. Courtesy Benetton Group