Supermodels Attend a Party for the Photographer Steven Meisel

At a cocktail get together in Decrease Manhattan on Friday to rejoice a brand new assortment of clothes and niknaks designed by the style photographer Steven Meisel for Zara, virtually the one boldface identify who didn’t present up was Steven Meisel.

“I might have been stunned if he had come,” mentioned Edward Enninful, the editor in chief of British Vogue, standing exterior the occasion area on Howard Road because the mannequin Kaia Gerber walked by. “He’s shy. He lets the work communicate for itself.”

If Mr. Meisel had been a film star, mentioned one other visitor, the author James Reginato, he’d be Greta Garbo.

Mr. Meisel’s picture spreads are identified for his or her creative and sometimes satirical narratives. In “Makeover Madness,” a 2005 function for Italian Vogue, Linda Evangelista posed as a couture-clad socialite with a cosmetic surgery habit.

Ms. Evangelista was considered one of many fashions on the get together, together with a lot of editors, stylists and different fashion-world individuals who have labored with Mr. Meisel.

He appears to be having a second. Along with the Zara collaboration, Phaidon is publishing a ebook this month, “Linda Evangelista Photographed by Steven Meisel.” On Oct. 6, Christie’s is holding an auction titled “Madonna x Meisel — the Intercourse Images” of greater than 40 images from Madonna’s 1992 espresso desk ebook, “Intercourse.”

Mr. Meisel, who shot the duvet for Madonna’s 1984 album, “Like a Virgin,” was her chief collaborator for “Intercourse.” She has credited him with educating her to deal with every picture shoot as “a small movie” and to rework in every into a brand new character. “He was the primary individual to introduce me to the concept of reinvention,” Madonna as soon as mentioned in an interview with Vogue.

A number of fashions on the get together spoke of how Mr. Meisel had both discovered signature appears to be like for them or modified their appearances in methods they’d not imagined.

Karen Elson, who made her identify with a goth princess look, was decked out in a black trench coat that Mr. Meisel had designed for Zara. She mentioned that when she met Mr. Meisel in 1996, she was “a mousy strawberry blond.” On their second shoot collectively, for Italian Vogue, Mr. Meisel tried one thing new.

“They shaved my eyebrows off and coloured my hair purple,” Ms. Elson mentioned. “It was the primary time I noticed myself, if that is smart. Steven has this uncanny capacity to make his topics really feel seen. It was like I had been reworked into who I’m, and that’s one thing magical he possesses. They name him a Svengali for a cause.”

The mannequin Joan Smalls recalled working with Mr. Meisel on a Moschino ad campaign by which he spoofed a TV sequence from the ’80s the place “all the ladies hate one another.”

If solely she might bear in mind the identify of the present.

“‘Dynasty’?” a reporter requested.

“Sure, that’s it. Precisely,” she mentioned. “It was simply a lot enjoyable.”

Mr. Meisel way back stopped going to occasions the place he is likely to be photographed. However everybody in vogue is aware of his look: androgynous, with lengthy black hair and all black garments, with a punk edge. His designs for Zara had been of a chunk with that. “It’s his uniform,” the mannequin Karolina Kurkova mentioned as she picked out a black leather-based biker cap from the racks.

Just a few toes away, the hairstylist Julien d’Ys was attempting on a faux-fur winter hat that prompt a mash-up of Dr. Zhivago and Rick Owens. Mr. d’Ys described how Mr. Meisel had introduced him to New York within the early ’80s to satisfy the designer Stephen Sprouse.

Mr. Sprouse and Mr. Meisel had labored collectively within the ’70s, underneath the designer Halston. Mr. Sprouse, who died in 2004, was the studio supervisor. Mr. Meisel, a gifted illustrator, was answerable for offering the Halston seamstresses with drawings that served as blueprints. However he didn’t get together with the boss, who derisively nicknamed him “Pocahontas,” Mr. Meisel instructed Vogue in a uncommon interview in 2009.

After a while at Ladies’s Put on Every day, Mr. Meisel was dropped at Condé Nast by its editorial director, Alexander Liberman, and commenced taking pictures for a lot of of its publications. Prada, Calvin Klein, Louis Vuitton and Versace began calling on him for advert campaigns. In these days, Mr. Meisel went in all places — Mudd Membership, Space, Marc Jacobs reveals. The reclusive half, Mr. d’Ys mentioned, got here later.

In 2009, when the Worldwide Heart of Images staged an exhibition that includes Mr. Meisel’s work, the Vogue editor Anna Wintour assigned a profile of Mr. Meisel. The end result was an article suggesting {that a} attainable cause for his reclusiveness was insecurity about his weight.

After that, Mr. Meisel shot for American Vogue solely sporadically. Requested in regards to the obvious deterioration of the journal’s relationship with Mr. Meisel, Ms. Wintour mentioned in an e-mail, “Steven is a fully good photographer, somebody whose work defines our period and Vogue’s historical past, and I love him a lot.”

At just a little previous 6 p.m., Tonne Goodman, a former vogue director at Vogue, made a beeline to Ms. Evangelista, who was decked out in a black oversize Meisel for Zara blazer alongside together with her personal billowing black skirt and a pair of Meisel-designed biker boots.

“Aren’t they nice?” she mentioned.

Mr. d’Ys gave Ms. Evangelista a kiss hi there, which become a protracted embrace.

“He gave me my authentic haircut!” Ms. Evangelista mentioned, recalling a shoot from early in her profession, when Mr. Meisel was behind the digital camera and Mr. d’Ys styled her hair. “He’s the one who made me cry.”

As Ms. Evangelista instructed it, she wasn’t ready initially to vary her look so drastically. However that’s what it was like working with Mr. Meisel.

A reporter requested her why he seemed to be having a resurgence.

“However is it a resurgence?” Ms. Evangelista mentioned. “I don’t know. I feel he’s finished a couple of issues all on the identical time, and there’s this youthful era that’s coming to understand him now and uncover him, I assume.”

“He’s legendary,” she continued. “All of us go into our quieter moments after which resurface. It’s not like he ever went away. Not like me.”