
2012 Pirelli Calendar Gala: Dressed Up for a Dressed-Down Production. This year’s beauties have opted to keep their clothes on, with Summer Rayne Oakes posing in an admittedly plunging red gown.By Vivien Schweitzer. 2013 Pirelli Calendar The globally acclaimed Magnum photographer Steve McCurry unveiled the 2013 Pirelli calendar during an official event held November 27 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
27, 2012.Well, up to a point. Video: See the Pirelli Models Get Rained On Behind the scenes at Steve McCurry’s 2013 calendar shoot. Owen Wilson Evades Flirtatious Model: Notes From the Pirelli Calendar Party He did a Scooby-Doo impression for us too. So there's this relationship between these really strong tyres and these really strong women."Pirelli Calendar 2013. They're strong and modern and they work, so in the shoot you've got these really strong, amazing modern women. Last year, for instance, discussing Mario Sorrento's Corsican shoot, the American supermodel and actor Milla Jovovich made the implausible argument that "the thing about Pirelli is the really great tyres.
The American's photograph of Sharbat Gula, a teenage Afghan refugee with vivid, haunted green eyes, became one of the most famous images in 20th-century photography after featuring on the cover of National Geographic. Instead, for 2013, Pirelli turned to one of the world's most famous war photographers and sent him to Rio, host to the next football World Cup and Olympic Games, and vibrant hub of a country which is booming like never before.The 2013 Pirelli Calendar tells its tales through faces drawn in graffiti and ordinary people, as well as through this year's models whose common thread is a powerful commitment to foundations, humanitarian projects and non-governmental organizations.Steve McCurry made his name documenting Afghanistan in the early 1980s, having smuggled himself into the country by growing a beard and wearing traditional dress. To celebrate its 40th calendar, the Italian company has decided to abandon the normal roster of fashion photographers such as Mario Testino and Terry Richardson, who transformed a trade publication into an annual celebration of "glamour" shots to grace the garage wall.
Photograph: EPAThe result is an act of homage to a city and a country that Pirelli recognises as one of its most important future markets. But Pirelli said they wanted me to do it my way, in my style."Ayoung woman fruit seller in Rio de Janeiro in one of the photographs of the 2013 Pirelli calendar, taken by US photographer Steve McCurry. "I'm not a fashion photographer. So how did he wind up with 11 of the world's leading models, shooting a Pirelli calendar?"Well, I certainly didn't think of myself as an obvious choice," McCurry admits.
And his version of "the Cal", as Pirelli types like to call it, is simply fabulous to look at. Stocky, white-haired now and brimming with enthusiasm for a city with "the best views on the planet", this native of Philadelphia has lost none of his photographic ambition. I wanted to photograph them in a special place, and Rio was perfect for that."There is a temptation to be somewhat cynical when it comes to models and good works, but in McCurry's company it is hard to be world-weary. They are purposeful and idealistic people. "But these models are clothed, and each of them has her own charity.
"I was more interested in the darker, moodier places. "I wasn't interested in doing the beach type of thing," he explains. This is a Rio of shadows, sultry allure and moments of ethereal beauty caught on the hoof.

Look at that light! It's just amazing."When the models appear, they seem to be offering an invitation to savour the drama of the city that is unfolding behind them. So we went back this time and these people were just out walking. By luck we found the location and on the top of the hill there was a park. I saw this high point in the distance and I thought if we could find it there would just be a fabulous view of the city. "I knew that spot because a few years ago I was in Rio and I wanted to get a cityscape kind of photo. "This is the best view of any city in the world," says McCurry.
"I wanted the models to be part of the environment and have life swirling around them, to be integrated into the city," says McCurry.Brazilian model Adriana Lima posing while pregnant in one of Steve McCurry's photographs for the 2013 Pirelli calendar. In another shot, a dark silhouette walks away from the camera, across the famous Lapa viaduct, heading for the warmth and light of Rio's skyscrapers. Karlie Kloss (see picture above) leans against a graffiti-covered tram as a bus departs for the city and a shadowy figure passes by unseen.
"I've tried to use my modelling as a platform from which to promote these projects, and this was the perfect situation." According to Kloss, "the fact that the models are clothed helps take away attention from the women's bodies and direct it to their causes".That may be overstating it a little. "Working with Steve on a project like this was an amazing opportunity to publicise the causes we're trying to help," said Kuhn. The calendar gives a meticulous account of each model's campaigning activities. Kyleigh Kuhn, who graduated from Berkeley university in California, has founded a campaign dedicated to the funding of schools for Afghan girls. Since 2004, when Nemcova lost her fiancé in the tsunami which overwhelmed Thailand, she has run the Happy Hearts Fund, dedicated to assisting child victims of natural disasters.
Even Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the left-wing former Brazilian president, turned up. You've got this false stereotype of models who don't have much to say… so to get to know them as real people was just fascinating and inspiring."The launch of "Steve McCurry's Rio", compered by Sophia Loren, was an opportunity for Milanese executives to bask in the acclaim of Pirelli's first "social" calendar. "Spending time with the girls outside the shoot and finding out about their work and causes was for me maybe the best thing about doing the calendar.
"What's the connection between nice pictures of Rio and Pirelli? You know, when you used to have the distinctive tyre tread painted on a model's bottom, you could see the marketing strategy. As Loren presented Lula with a Pirelli award for "social engagement", there were those who remembered those simpler days with a degree of nostalgia."I can't quite figure out what the point of it is any more, I'm afraid," observed one veteran of a motoring publication. In its early years, a calendar launch was a very different affair, populated exclusively by members of the tyre-making industry and that year's collection of models.

