Les Adore Shakes Up Production at Harvard
The collective aims to provide students from diverse backgrounds with the resources and platform to tell their stories.
Oct. 11, International Day of the Girl Child, was chosen to mark the official launch of Les Adore, a new Harvard-based production network that publishes video content, photography, and a magazine. Les Adore is particularly focused on giving creatives from marginalized groups the opportunity to express themselves through several different media. The collective aims to provide students from diverse backgrounds with the resources and platform to tell their stories. Les Adore also endeavors to increase appreciation for content production as an art form, so that student artists working in the media of film, production, and photography can see their talents fully appreciated and recognized.
The name Les Adore, which is French for “love them,” was chosen by founder and creative director Amina T. Salahou ’25 because the production network seeks to foster “reverence” for its diverse creative partners’ “creativity, resilience, and unique perspectives.” Salahou takes a broad approach to defining the “them” Les Adore asks its audience to love, making space for “anyone that feels misrepresented,” but also emphasizes the collective’s dedication to uplifting voices that are often silenced because of gender and socio-economic inequalities.
“Typically, low income individuals who are at institutions like Harvard, for instance, always don't have the opportunity or capacity to engage in creative acts because they need to focus more on what's going to make them money in the future,” Salahou said.
Alexis T. Lauricella ’25, who is head of television and media production for Les Adore, agrees that a vital component of the production network’s mission is to ensure that access to funding is not a barrier for self-expression.
“There are so many stories that want to be told that can't be — whether because they don't know the resources are there, or [they do and] they don't know how to access them,” Lauricella said.
Gender — another key feature of Les Adore’s mission — figured prominently in Les Adore magazine’s first volume, “Embracing Girlhood: More Than Just a Pretty Face.” Unlike traditional fashion magazines, the volume offers context for its models’ passions and talents beyond what meets the eye.
One model, Zoe L. Benham ’25, had her photographs featured alongside a bio detailing her accomplishments as a tutor, as well as her perspective on girlhood. Les Adore’s projects of showcasing its models’ complexity resonated with Benham.
“Giving substance to a model’s character and what they do outside of modeling is incredibly important,” Benham said.
As a production network that focuses on fashion through its magazine and other components, Les Adore also must wrestle with the stereotypes and injustices that have pervaded the fashion industry — and is intentionally flipping the script.
“Within the fashion industry, women are definitely exploited,” Salahou said. That’s part of what inspired her to tackle girlhood in the magazine’s first issue — along with the pervasive influence of the Barbie movie.
“[Barbie] made me so proud to be a girl,” Salahou said. “Like, yeah, I love pink, and there’s nothing wrong with that. That doesn’t mean I’m weak.”
This representation of not just womanhood, but femininity as a source of power inspired her to show that her models, while “beautiful people,” are also talented, intelligent, and multifaceted.
Benham also recognizes the potentially harmful nature of exclusive fashion magazines, and is enthusiastic about Les Adore’s potential to promote diversity in those spaces.
“Representation is incredibly important, especially in places where we decide what is beautiful and what’s not,” Benham said. In addition to including a variety of models, Les Adore also made the shooting experience itself empowering, from Benham’s perspective.
“It was a very collaborative experience,” Benham said. “And it definitely felt like a lot of my input was taken.” In addition to having a say in her poses, Benham also selected her own clothing for the shoot, selecting an outfit that reflected the “Southern/Bohemian mix” that she associates with her Texan background.
But Les Adore is much more than a fashion magazine. It’s a production network that creates content across diverse forms of media. For example, the collective intends to release multiple short films in early 2024. In the future, Les Adore plans to take advantage of all of its different media outlets to continue to uplift groups that have not yet had the chance to tell their stories.
“As we continue to build up this multimedia network, it’s going to be interesting to see where it goes,” Lauricella said. With such a recent launch, there are manifold ways the network can develop in the future.
“I think our options are literally endless,” said Lauricella.