If the Situation’s theory that his shirtlessness causes mass gawking is correct, Purple would be “the Situation” of magazines. (Snooki would be Cosmo: You love it but sometimes you just want it to shut up and go away.) Each issue, replete with nudity and provocative imagery, oftentimes sexual in nature, somehow manages to top the last. The magazine seems to be having a moment after editor Olivier Zahm, who works closely with Terry Richardson, spoke to Style.com at length last week about his philosophies of women and shooting them naked.
To me love and sex is the most beautiful thing on earth, you know. It’s more beautiful than a landscape, so I love to keep pictures of the girls in these private moments because they are giving you the most beautiful side of themselves. It’s like a gift from God. It’s beautiful. I’m not New Age, I’m not mystical, I just really love it, and it’s so beautiful to capture with a camera that I really want to share that, you know…And also, Purple is a lifestyle. With my magazine, what I want to do is personally to be more free, and I want people to be more free, to open their possibility of contact, of sex, of love. I want that. This is important to me. I consider that Purple is a free lifestyle. Not in a stupid way, not in a childish or immature way, in a mature way now because I’m 45, 46.
With that in mind we looked at the most recent issue, bearing Lindsay Lohan on the cover, with a more discerning eye. Too much stood out to simply mix in with our other favorite fashion images in our monthly fashion image awards. So we’ve compiled the most noteworthy pages in this slideshow. (Warning: images NSFW, obviously.)