Fruit Friday: Apples and Oranges

I already covered this shot of May Andersen and her highly suggestive orange.

So I’ll supplement it with this similarly positioned pic of Apples van Ravenstein, shot for the 1979 issue and popping up in Walter Iooss Jr.’s Heaven book.

(Here’s that fruit in situ.)

Topless Tuesday: Apples & Alexis, 1979 & 1982

In my previous entry, I initially stated that it was another eight years before another swimsuit issue featured toplessness.

I was wrong. It was eleven years.

I was tricked by this photo of 70s supermodel and 19th-century dirigible villainess Apollonia van Ravenstein.

But the caption from the 1979 issue set me straight:

•

Sashaying on Praslin’s Côte d’Or, Apples reveals another side of her fishnet suit. The end.

•

The word “another” implies that there was an earlier photo of her fishnet suit, and sure enough, this is the same swimsuit:

…and she isn’t topless at all.

That sends us forward to Kim Alexis in 1982, with this shot.

Again, the caption feels the need to call it out, referring to the suit (somewhat strangely) as “one-piece topless.”

With this, we are off to the races. Nearly every swimsuit issue after this one features at least one topless suit.

How Do Ya Like Them Apples?

I recently got myself a copy of Heaven, the collection of Walter Iooss swimsuit photography.

It’s a beautiful book, and one I’d like to get into more deeply at another time. But one thing it has brought to my attention is the existence of a model named Apollonia van Ravenstein.With a name like that, you have to become a model or a supervillain. She opted for the former, appearing in the 1979 issue with her wavy brown tresses and massageable curves.Apparently she was pretty big in the 70s, and her friends called her “Apples.”