Words by Derek Rielly
Photos by Richard Freeman
The baritone hack of a three-litre Audi diesel signals the arrival of the subjects for this issue’s cover shoot.
Jordy Smith, 24 and Lyndall Jarvis, who’s just a little older, climb out of the immense German vehicle and in, that tawny afternoon Hawaiian light, it’s as if Lono himself has shone a divine torch on the couple. Lyndall’s apple cheeks inflate Diesel denim shorts and a black t-shirt serves as protection from wolfish eyes. Jordy, slim as a whippet, brown as a berry, happy as a lark and looking like the cat that ate the canary, wears elastic-waist beach shorts and covers his unusual nipples in vintage cotton.
You find us on this early winter afternoon on Oahu’s North Shore in a clapboard rental at Backyards, Sunset.
Jordy sits down with a Hawaiian poke bowl of raw fish and a seaweed salad. A hair and makeup artist from Los Angeles hovers, her fingers testing the pliability of Jordy’s outer branches.
“Big hair,” she says.
“Yeah, big hair,” says Jordy. “It’s a big bush. Groom it. Do whatever you like to me. You need to cement this hair in this position because it doesn’t bow to anything.”
Lyndall strolls out into the parlour with jeans painted on her flanks.
Jordy strikes. “You. Look. Hot.”
“How are the jeans, girl?” says our stylist.
“Tight. No secrets,” says Lyndall.
Soon, you see us in the Q7, with support crew in a forgettable Ford Explorer, lighting up the Nimitz Highway to Wahiawa, a slightly down-at-heel town en route to our final destination at the Modern Hotel in Honolulu.
At a laundromat, a Chinese restaurant, at a pawn store and on the strip outside a run of men’s satisfaction salons, the couple pose, strut a little, and generally charge the photos like two fabulous and mythical beasts.
The night ends, late, but not so late the memories are shot, in their hotel room, which you see here.
Jordy peels off his clogs. Lyndall presents. Two warm-blooded animals dominating the animal kingdom.
An oversimplification of a highly complex and sophisticated love, perhaps.
