There's something about the beginning of the silly season and annual, socially sanctioned sexual imagery, isn't there? Perhaps, its because the orgiastic consumerism in the lead up to the holiday period needs to be grounded in some kind of more concrete, fleshy release?
Anyway, the Americans get their Victoria's Secret Parade, and the Italians release the Pirelli Calendar, a yearly endeavour to turn the mechanic's pin-up porno into something a little - okay a lot - more expensive.
How do they do that? By hiring the biggest photographers in the world to shoot it (this year it's Mario Sorrenti's turn), and then signing on the world's most famously beautiful, and notoriously naughty, women. Kate Moss is the crown jewel in this year's edition, joined by Margareth Made, Milla Jovovich, Joan Smalls, Natasha Poly, Isabeli Fontana, Saskia de Brauw, Guinevere Van Seenus, Edita Vilkevicute, Rinko Kikuchi and both of Lara Stone's breasts.
You may notice this list includes more than one woman over thirty and, while I wouldn't call the variety of body shapes on display particularly diverse, they do lack the dimensional rigidity of Angels. They also, universally, lack pubic hair, which makes me a little sad inside, particularly given this year's theme.
Almost all of the girls have gone full-frontal this time, frequently doing so against sand, rocks and trees. The calendar's use of cosmetics is very minimal. This is because Sorrenti wanted to emphasise his subjects' natural beauty.
Perhaps the association of female sexuality with the untamed wilds, like some last, great mystery that despite the best efforts of science and civilisation, can never truly be conquered, nor understood, is a little played out, but it certainly makes for some pretty pictures.
I could write a thousand words about how Pirelli and Victoria's Secret provide the ideal cross-cultural comparison to highlight the differences between broad social attitudes towards sexuality in the United States and Continental Europe, but I think the imagery speaks for itself.