This month’s Vogue magazine includes pictures of Kirsten Dunst lounging around in ball gowns the size of small condos, an article on how to figure out what kind of silhouette you are (“Are you an Hourglass, a Triangle, or a Lean Line?”), and, toward the back, a 14-page fashion spread shot on location in the haute-capital of Maine — Port Clyde.
The spread, titled “Maine Event,” highlights the fabric tartan, better known to you and me as plaid. This season, tartan is apparently the stuff of high fashion, and the tiny Down East village of Port Clyde, near Monhegan Island, is apparently the perfect place to make high fashion seem all rustic.
“Tartan,” reads one of the spread’s captions, “the woolly stuff of foggy fall mornings and cool, craggy coasts, is the centerpiece of a new haute grunge look.” The caption accompanies a two-page photo of international model Coco Rocha, decked out like Elvira and surrounded by five scraggly lobstermen. The group is standing on a dock. Rocha is wistfully inspecting a lobster.
Jeffrey Delaney, a 29-year-old boat captain from nearby Tenants Harbor, was one of the five local guys roped into appearing in Vogue. Delaney says none of the guys in the photo are actually lobstermen, though he and two others do work at Monhegan Boat Lines. Vogue was in Port Clyde in May for three days, taking photos, sticking the guys in the shots, and docking the Laura B, the supplies ferry to Monhegan Island, so Rocha could use it as a prop.
“All I know is that the whole island was freaking out because it’s our freight boat,” Delaney recalls. “It was really a bummer.”
Delaney, who’s the guy in the photo with the sketched-out look on Rocha’s left, speaks with a thick Maine drawl. He’s lived in the Down East area since 1991.
“My wife was down in Connecticut [during the photo shoot],” says Delaney. “Her father was in the hospital, and I didn’t want to pull attention away from him but finally I called her and said, ‘You know, honey, I’m in Vogue.’”
“It’s not like Dancing With the Stars exactly, but it was neat.”
