How much is there to decode about a man who runs a fashion magazine riddled with naked women and a complementing blog saturated with images of his naked lady love interests? Sometimes, right next to posts about his 6-year-old daughter? The Times delves deeper into how Purple editor Olivier Zahm came to create this sort of fashion magazine and this sort of blog. It doesn’t seem that complicated. “What [people] don’t get is that he really loves women,” says Purple contributor Rachel Chandler, who also shoots for Vogue.com. “Like, more than any man I’ve ever met.”
“It makes perfect sense that he became obsessed with women,” adds Purple contributor Terry Richardson. “It’s part of becoming a man, isn’t it?” Zahm tells the Times he is fighting a culture of “misery”:
“Everyone is scared of having a free sexual life and what they do is go on the Internet and masturbate. This is the pure sexual misery today. They don’t even go to the movie theater like in the ’70s.”
When he is miserable himself, like the time his girlfriend Natacha Ramsay left him for another man, he blogged about his heartbreak, writing, “Natacha’s decision to leave me so brutally and painfully will certainly be seen by conservative people as a clear feminine revenge against the lifestyle Natacha and I used to share, and think that I’m a dreamer. Right now I’m just a mess. But I will hopefully recover soon and offer you some more pictures of love and sex.” Zahm explains that monumental post:
“It made people realize that I was not just a pervert who wanted a new girl every night and was obsessed by his own celebrity and narcissism,” he said. “It made me realize that I can be more open with the Diary and more complex and really express myself. I’m not just the cliché.”
The answer to what is behind this man — who is obsessed with hot naked girls, was born of swinging hippie parents and swings himself but is still in touch with his emotions and feminine side — is buried in the Times piece, in a short but impactful quote from sometime Purple model Paz de la Huerta, who notes, “Also, Olivier’s French.”
