I’ve often heard models referred to as ‘clothes horses’ and often I’ve felt exactly that way about them. And on the other hand, they can inspire and at times be instrumental as an artist’s muse. In a recent unveiling of commercial beauty, Louis Vuitton released a series of mug shots of their models sans makeup, au naturel. It smells similar to the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty but on a much grander scale. In my opinion, most of the models look skewiff or just a tad bit off, but not in the good-quirky-look way. As it was put at Reddit.com, “They aren’t supposed to be attractive – they are supposed to compliment the clothing. Basically, they are living coat hangers.”

Louis Vuitton Models Unmasked. Click for full-size

Interestingly, someone has compiled all the shots in an overlay that blends their features to produce a super-woman of sorts, I suspect, Louis Vuitton’s vision of beauty (or the perfect coat hanger). Either way, she looks young…

Louis Vuitton Composite Image of Beauty

A study was conducted last decade where they surveyed men, showing them images of computer generated faces. The resulting winner of this beauty contest apparently had the most numerically averaged and proportionate values of facial features. Beauty or structural perfection has a geometric ratio 1: 1.6180339887. It’s the golden ratio, quite often found in nature. When applied to a face you can map the perfect face basically. The BBC did this a few years ago – Paulina Poriskova has a face that perfectly matches that ratio.

Paulina Porizkova. Mathematically, The World's Most Beautiful Woman

There are arguments for and against this method. One could say that beauty isn’t it found in neutrality, and it can’t be measured with numbers and it’s found in the remarkable things, like gap-teeth (hot!).

Anyhow, the geeks and nerds with technology at their finger tips will never cease to create the ultimate ideal of beauty…

Weird Science - featuring the 80s ideal of beauty, Kelly LeBrock

I’ll leave you with this last piece of pseudo-science quackery, here technology composites the faces of some of the most beautiful celebrities in the world.