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The
Pirelli Pinup Calendar
You
know we love motorcycle pinup calendars at FastDates.com! Our website
was initially created to promote our own calendar line and celebrate
the mating of beautiful and sexy celebrity pinup models with the world's
most exotic racing and premier custom bikes. Our own Iron &
Lace Custom Bike, Fast Dates Race Bike and
Berm Busters Motocross Racing Pinup Calendars continue
to be the world's premier selling line of motorcycle pinup calendars.
The
2004 Pirelli calendar:
n
the 12th November 2003, in the historical Royal Courts of Justice building
in London, the 2004 Pirelli Calendar was presented to the press, to
collectors and to enthusiasts the world over. Once again, this event
was one of the world events most awaited by lovers of photography, fashion
and beauty, an exclusive event that traditionally blends art with seduction.
This issue is special: it marks the 40th anniversary of the Pirelli
Cal, a "must have" symbol, a true icon of beauty.
The models
The calendar models offer, each time we
look at them, new views on the concept of beauty. They are an integral
part of the photographic landscape; they mix together with the natural
elements, giving the viewer the impression that they always have been
there. The models are a sort of guidance on how to read the pictures,
with some degree of erotic allusion, but above all they represent a
hymn to life.
This
year the Pirelli Calendar is embellished by a line-up of some of the
world's most highly touted models, some of whom participated in previous
editions: Maria Carla Boscono, Karolina Kurkova, Natalia Vodianova and
Jessica Miller in 2003, Frankie Ryder in 2001 and Alek Wek in 1999 and
2000. They are joined by Liberty Ross, Amanda Moore, Pollyanna McIntosh,
and promising "rookies" Dewi Driegen, Esther De Jong, Ai Tominaga
and Adina.
The
aim of the Pirelli Calendar is to illustrate a particular theme with
a set of pictures of the highest artistic level. Every year the quintessential
nature, the subject or essence of the calendar is methodically planned
by Pirelli and carefully maintained top-secret until the official launch,
organised with a private but spectacular style ceremony.
"The
Cal" can be interpreted as both a "mean and an end" of
Pirelli's communication strategy, which has been built over more than
100 years of initiatives and success in the field of reach, branding,
brand awareness and corporate image projection. Reductively, it can
be confined to be a "marketing tool", but for its estimators
and enthusiasts is definitively more than that.
he pictures
"This Calendar portrays an imaginary world, so I wanted the images
to evoke fantasies, simply hinting at or suggesting forms and situations,"
Knight explains. "When we dream, we use a wide perspective, and
the image may be clearly defined in some details while it is out of
focus in others. Of course, the technique must also lend coherence to
the images from a visual standpoint."
Knight's post-production technique, based on the "merging"
and chromatic processing of the photographs, proves to be quite well
suited to this particular project: each shot is perfectly defined in
some points, less in others. "In each photograph there are situations
or symbols to decipher," Knight concludes. "I want people
to be puzzled by this Pirelli Calendar and have fun looking at it and
looking at it again, discovering a meaning of their own each day".
The models
In his quest for inspiration, Nick Knight contacted some of the most
famous figures from the fashion, entertainment, literature and contemporary
art worlds, speaking with each of them and gathering their confidences.
"I asked them to tell me their ideas," he recounts, "and
then I illustrated them. The responses were incredibly varied, because
the personalities of the women interviewed were quite varied".
Each image of the Calendar is therefore associated with an idea expressed
by one of these women (listed below in alphabetical order), but the
names behind them will not be revealed.
Bjork (singer, Islandic)
Catherine Deneuve (actress, French)
Tracey Emin (artist, British)
Marianne Faithful (singer and actress, British)
Heidi Fleiss (writer, American)
Emma Forrest (writer, British)
Courtney Love (singer and actress, British)
Stella McCartney (designer, British)
Catherine Millet (writer, French)
AimÈe Mullins (athlete and actress, American)
Isabella Rossellini (actress, Italian)
Emmanuelle Seigner (actress, French)
Liv Tyler (actress, American)
Elizabeth Wurtzel (writer, American)
"It's like a masked ball," recounts an amused Knight. "The
cast of advisors - actresses, singers, top models, writers - is variegated
but homogeneous in terms of interpretation, because of the beauty that
all the models involved have in common".
This
Pirelli Calendar is highly innovative in its technique and artistic
expression, therefore, but in the selection of protagonists fully confirms
the canons of 40 years of tradition.
Innovation and technology
at the service of artistic creativity of Nick Knight, world-famous British
photographer who made visual sculptures, born of a symbiotic relationship
between traditional photography and digital art. His taste, combined
with an approach typical of "conceptual art", have produced
an unprecedented Pirelli Calendar that is vibrant in its color, abstract
in its design and magical to the eye.
Knight posed his models
in an ambience that is dreamlike and fantastic but unequivocally feminine
in which the perspective of portrayed female sexuality - as traditionally
perceived by men - is reversed. "I feared that the calendar might
propose a vision of woman from the exclusively masculine viewpoint,"
Knight explains. "So for this project I decided to ask the women
what they would like to see represented in a Pirelli Calendar, leaving
them to choose the theme."
Above, a shot from
our SBK World Superbike Championsip endorsed 2003 Fast Dates Racebike
Pinup Calendar featuring the world's top factory racebike beautiful
photographed for perfect viewing, together with the world's most beautiful
pinup models like Penthouse Pet of the Year Zdenka (shown here) and
Miss Graet Britain Nicki Lane.
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Crossbow
Calendar
Certainly
one of the first motorcyle pinup calendars started 17 years ago
by former Superbike magazine editor John Winthrope in England,
with assistance by Vic Barnes. The Crossbow calendar always features
a diverse mix of sportbikes, racebikes, naked bikes, exotics,
and just plain off the wal weird stuff like this year's Harley
V-Rod trike and a turbo Yamaha v-Max, and a MPC Ural Military
Sidecar outfit.
The Crossbow
models are the prerequisite popular British Page 3 girls, who
on some pages appear topless and on other pages not (?). Our favorites
this year include the very sexy Nicola McLean and Rachel Mundy.
But we also miss last year's sexy cover girl Jodie Oram who should
have earned a return performance, and the fact none of the calendar
girls models are featured in more photos on the Crossbow website.
Crossbow
upgraded to a high quality 15x15 spiral wire bound format a few
years back which we like. But the larger format and quality sheet
press printed calendar needs to be photographed with a larger
format camera for improved sharpness. We'd like to see the pictures
run full page width without all the side text. The Crossbow Calendar
(£9 ) and other products including our
FastDates.com Calendar line are available to IE browser users
only at Crossbow-Calendars.com |
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Superbike
Magazine Calendar
Superbike magazine has the potential to produce a really incredible
calendar, but lucky for us they don't! The constraints of making
their calendar an affordable free give-a-way packaged in a poly
bag with the December year end issue of Superbike means it's not
perfect.Their calendar is a saddle stitched fold-in-the middle
magazine format, inexpensively web printed on lightweight 100lb.
coated cover stock paper. Expect the thin paper calendar to tear
through its punch hole and fall off the wall within weeks of hanging
it up, or as soon as your buddy lifts the pages to flip through
it. And because it is web printed the skin tone of the models
is not always perfect. It does fold open to a nice 17 x 11 3/4
inch size, but in giving us nice big pictures the calendar grid
at the bottom of the page is pretty useless and very difficult
to read.
The 2003
calendar shots are revived 2002 Superbike magazine cover / centerfold
bike and model shots which just ran the past year. The bikes are
mostly current production bikes which the magazine featured and
tested, including the Italian exotics like MV Agusta and Benelli.
Now that
we're finish slamming Superbike, we'll give them four stars(!)
for having the most beautiful young model topless models posed
up close and personal. Together with excellent quality studio
shots of the girls and the bikes by Anthony Butler and Paul Barshon.
While the graphic layout and Photoshop reworking of the images
by Huw Willams and Jayne Toyne is also first class.
And we'll
slam them again for not paying their models a fair working wage.
We tried to set them up with our own Miss Great Britain Nicki
Lane for a feature shoot, but they didn't wan to pay her much
more than cab fare for a day's shoot and she had to decline. |
Click to Enlarge
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Performance
Bikes Magazine Calendar
Like Superbike, Performance Bikes offers their calendar as a freebie
with their December issue. This calendar is also saddle stitched
(stapled-in-the middle magazine format), web printed on lightweight
100lb. coated cover stock paper. It also opens to a 17 x 11 3/4
inch size. Their art department's design of the calendar is just
plain bad with poor layouts, photo croping and type use. The skin
tone of the models is really off. Many of the girls are an off-yellow
color or just plain faded.
If you want
a calendar grid you can write on, the Performance Bikes calendar
is big enough with almost one full page devoted to the date grid.
But expect the thin paper calendar to tear through its punch hole
and fall off the wall within weeks of repeated use.
Again, the
2003 calendar shots are the magazine's revived 2002 cover / centerfold
bike and model shots which just ran the past year. Credit goes
for the bikes being either top factory or privater race bikes,
but negative marks goes for the tight cropping. poor layout design
and medicore photograpahy that makes the bikes difficult to enjoy.
They really blow it in jamming an editorial style product release
ad on the date grid page, forcing the girl pictures to be really
small, when they should be a tall as the grid and take up the
whole page.
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Click to Enlarge
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Dreamgirls
Calendar
The first motorcycle pinuip calendar in America started back in
1985, with Dreamgirls origionally featuring custom Harleys and
licensed by Harley-Davison as an official product until 1998 when
they dropped it for political reasons. Many people still call
it "The Harley Calendar" of which it is no longer. The
current publisher of Dreamgirls is StarWest who uses custom bikes
submitted by private owners, some built by known builders and
some not too special. The models are all Los Angles "B"
pinup models shot in nice locations. Photography changed for 2003
with the hiring of top LA photographer Kim Mizuno. High quality
printing in a large 15 x15" wire bound format. At selected
dealers. $14.95
Iron
& Lace Calendar
Dream Girls competes with our FastDates.com Calendar
title
Iron & Lace which is also a 15-inch design wire spriral
bound, but printed on even heavier high quality art board. Bikes
are the latest leading edge customs from top name builders across
America like Paul Yaffe, Jim Nassi, Jesse James, and our models
are well known celebrity movie stars, national beauty pageant
winners and centerfolds from Playboy, Penthouse, Perfect 10 magazines.
Selected dealers and HERE.
$15.95 |
Click to Find
out More
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Order
the FastDates.com
Calendars HERE!
Pit
Lane News and the
Ripped Pavement, Fast Dates
Roadracing Calendars feature
the photography of
Gold & Goose,
Jim Gianatsis
World
Superbike Girls Gone Wild!
Click HERE
to enjoy a heart warming shot of our official SBK FastDates.com Calendar
Girls from 2002 Laguna Seca World Superbike, Miss Great Britain Nicki
Lane (left) and Lauren Nicole (right), taking
a short break from the rigors of shooting the next Fast Dates
Racebike Pinup Calendar out at the race track with famed photographer
Jim Gianatsis, to unwind in their skimpy bikinis on the nearby beach in
Carmel. Nicki and Lauren also served as the official Team Ducati Corse
umbrella girls for Troy Bayliss and Ben Bostrom
during the race weekend.
You too can re
live a World Superbike weekend at the beach and at Laguna Seca Raceway
with our SBK World Superbike Trophy Girls in
The Making of Fast Dates The Video available for ordering.
And for a lot more very revealing pictures of our beautiful SBK FastDates.com
Calendar Girls, be sure to visit them in Members
Corner.
2003
and 2004 Fast Dates Calendar
photos now available in
Member's Corner!
More
Tantalizing tidbits from the Crossbow Calendar
Nicola
and Rachel might be working on their sun tans if they were anywhere
else but in England.
Click for the big
picture. Jessica Miller gets firsky on the back of Alessandro Gassman's
Vespa.
The
Pirelli 2003 Calendar
Yes,
Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover supermodel Yamila Diaz-Rahl does have
great breasts, and no, you can't buy this calendar. The world's largest
tire maker has been producing the world's most expensive nude pinup
calendar as a promotional giveaway since the 1960's. It's usually a
lavish production featuring the world's top supermodels photographed
by one of the world's premier photographers, usually in a large 20"
square format with high qaulity design and printing. Pirelli's worldwide
distributors usually pay $40 each cost for the calendars, and in turn
give them away as Christams presnts to their favorite people. You have
to know someone at Pirelli to get one. Usually you can find an old one
on E-Bay if you'ld like to get one for your collection.
Yamilo Diaz-Rahl
says "no" to Enrico Lo Verso, but her eyes say "Yes,
yes yes."
A few years back
photographer Herb Ritts got Cindy Crawford and Laetitia Casta totally
naked on the beach for the Pirelli Calendar.
For 2003 its fashion
photographer Bruce Weber who gets top boy/girl supermodels topless including
Yamilo Diaz-Rahl who just happens toalso be on the cover of the 2003
Sports Illustarated Swimsuit as well, and Victoria's Secrect model Heidi
Klum, all together in a rural Italian village. The candid style shots
are pretty boing, there's no concept or tie-in to Pirelli tires, but
hell, Bruce probably only had a $1,000,000 shooting budget to work with....
You can see all
the pictures in the current Pirelli Calendars pn their website at Pirelli.com
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