Diane Pernet on the Future of Fashion Film for Dazed Digital

After making pit stops in Milan, Tokyo and Moscow, A Shaded View on Fashion Festival unveiled its NYC edition this weekend, presented in partnership with FIAF and Kering. Aside from the eclectic mix of fashion films, the event also featured talks with directors Mike Figgis and Jerry Schatzberg, as well as a screening of Schatzberg’s pivotal film, Puzzle of a Downfall Child.

“It was a big deal for me to do ASVOFF here. I think it’s really important to show the diversity of what you can reflect on fashion through film,” Pernet says. “That’s the whole DNA of the festival, the diversity and as well the international aspect. Every time the festival travels, the idea is to inspire and be inspired; to get more directors to submit films and more collaborations between directors and designers. It’s just about always trying to push the level up, up, up.”

In celebration of ASVOFF NYC, Dazed asked founder and fashion film pioneer, Diane Pernet to chart her five favourite fashion films from the festival’s selection.

THE FOUR DREAMS OF MISS X - SHADOWS BY MIKE FIGGIS, STARRING KATE MOSS

“I think it’s so amazing and figuring that when she was filmed, because it’s night vision, she was walking in total darkness. It’s just her and him. It creates such a mood and shows a product well. It’s a film first.  And okay, the fashion is a protagonist but it’s not like, “Here’s the product”.  It has no sell-out date. It’s absolutely as valid now as it was when it was made. It’s her first acting role and he’s such a brilliant director. Even when she bumps into something because she’s in the dark, it’s great. And playing with the voice, these are things you can do in film, you can’t do it in a photo shoot.”

SHE SAID, SHE SAID DIRECTED BY OSCAR WINNER, STUART BLUMBERG

“I just love that film. I never tire of looking at that. Again, it’s really constructed as a film. It’s not a photo shoot, it’s a film and you get totally into the characters.  They look great, the way it builds up with the sense of humour, because I think humour is something we’re really missing in fashion. I like the character development, the scene with the dog in the park, the washing the car and then the end, the dress. How much better could you show fashion? That was so good. It’s all about desire, isn’t it? The idea of doing a fashion shoot or a fashion show, it’s want and desire on one level or another and that crystallised it for me. And the actors, they’re bonafide actors, the script is great and you can’t help but laugh with it.”

I WANT MUSCLE BY ELISHA SMITH-LEVEROCK, FEATURING KIZZY VAINES

“That film has a special meaning to me. Everybody has a different concept of what beauty is, and this particular woman, she looks so powerful. I like what she said, just her approach about power and her sense of beauty, which is, like anything, so open to interpretation. What I might think is beautiful, you might think is hideous or vice versa. The way that the soundtrack was too, the credits, the colour – the whole thing I just loved it. And again, it has no sell out date, it will be as relevant in ten years as it is right now, all of those films. To me, that is what I’m looking for, which in a way maybe is the opposite of what fashion is supposed to be. Fashion is supposed to have a sell out date, otherwise the industry doesn’t continue. But I think there should be no sell out date for concepts and brands.” 

LE DERNIER CRI BY ERWIN OLAF

“I’ve loved Erwin Olaf and his work for a long time. I’ve seen a lot of his films. He’s had maybe four films in my festivals over the years. This one was in You Wear It Well, which was in 2006, my festival before ASVOFF. I like the way the set is, the tension sort of builds up. It’s very stylised, very provocative in its own way. It just leaves you wanting more.”

HOLI HOLY - A FILM BY MANISH ARORA BY BHARAT SIKKA, STARING BISHI BHATTACHARYA

“It’s fantastic because you have the story of these widows that after they became widows had to wear white, they could now wear colours. It’s celebrating the widows of Varanasi. It’s also interesting to me because Manish was on the jury for ASVOFF three years ago. He got so into the whole process, that’s what inspired him to make a film. (The making of the film) was under the worst conditions like a low budget and they hadn’t had so many monsoons in forty years. Bishi (Bhattacharya), she’s got an amazing voice and an amazing presence. They’re a great match. It’s a beautiful story and you really see the clothes. And all those things that happened by chance like the guy in the red toga walking by, there are all these little incidents. Even the fact that the rain was so intense that where you had those pyres, normally you would see them from the ground up, you only saw from the top because the water was so high. It was really hard to shoot.  You see all the water in there, it was a mess, but they did it with passion. They almost got electrocuted in the boats, but they did it a hundred percent. He couldn’t believe it when he won three prizes, he was totally shocked.”

View the full article here. 

Unzipping the Universe for Dazed Digital

Since its inception in 2006 the ITS ACCESSORIES awards, organised in partnership with fastening manufacturer YKK, has been a champion of young and innovative design talent.  Past winners of the competition’s YKK award (a €10,000 cash prize which sees finalists integrate the company’s fastenings into their product) have shown that a plethora of creative possibilities lie in between the zipper’s two seemingly simple rows of metal teeth, from Percy Lau’s horizon-enhancing eyewear, to Benjamin John Hall’s resurrection-exploring footwear and Laura Amstein’s graphically-moulded accessories.

In anticipation of this year’s awards, the latest creative to interpret YKK’s fastening object is filmmaker Justin Hantz, who has previously worked with the likes of Kool A.D. and Islands alongside creating films for brands including Hex and Alien NYC. The resulting clip can be best described as a psychedelic, action animation trip. 

The zipper is utilised as an active portal on this visually-stimulating voyage, revealing one dimension of 3D effects and trippy optical illusions after another, each one more intense and kaleidoscopic than its predecessor. Prismatic colours, geometric shapes and swirling zips collide with intensely saturated clouds, free-floating Grecian columns and spiralling vortexes along the way, proving once again the infinite possibilities of creation that one humble fastening can bring.

View the full article here.

Jordan Sullivan: The Young Earth for Dazed Digital

After artistic endeavours like capturing New Mexico’s Indian summers for The Ghost Country, Jordan Sullivan’s latest project saw the Houston-born photographer leave behind the desolate American desert for the scenic splendour of Iceland.

The resulting volume one of his Wandering Days book series, A Young Earth, mixes Sullivan’s evocative landscape imagery and voyeuristic portraits with poetry, prose and historical fiction anecdotes. The photo-text novella tells the story of two twenty-something Americans attempting to come to grips with their own mortality, friendship and destructive love triangles of the past - all whilst trekking through the idyllic Icelandic landscape.

Dazed Digital caught up with Sullivan to speak about the recreation of forgotten family photographs, car breakdowns in the middle of the Nordic mountains and trips from heaven to hell and back. 

Dazed Digital: Where did your inspiration for the story come from?

Jordan Sullivan: I don't usually work from inspiration, I just work every day. I do follow paths and ideas, and have always been interested in the idea of ending at another beginning - the end of youth, the end of love, what comes next, the new worlds we discover when we finally move on. I knew this story needed to deal with death, specifically dying young. My friends and I were confronting some of the same things the characters in my story are, at least with regards to getting older. The specifics of the story were a little hazy until I started shooting it and looking at the images. I tried to let the feeling I got from the final pictures guide me when writing the text, though I did have this dream of a guy driving his friend to the afterlife. They get in a car and drive to this dead end, the man drops his friend off and then drives back to earth.

DD: What were the most memorable moments during the production of this series?

Jordan Sullivan: Sleeping on the sides of roads, watching the yellow moon rise, running out of gas in the mountains in a snowstorm 200 miles from the nearest town, being in one of the most strange and beautiful places in the world with my best friends.

DD: What compelled you to create a novella as opposed to a photography-only book, and how did the creative process differ when thinking about the combination of text and image, as opposed to just the visuals?

Jordan Sullivan: I have always had an interest in the interaction between image and text. I love stories and fiction. Growing up, I was always reading and watching films. I sometimes feel more like a writer or storyteller than an artist or a photographer. The Young Earth is as much a novella and a poem as it is a photography book in my mind. The challenge was to create images that illustrated the feeling of the story rather than just the action or the plot. The book needed to flow like music in that way. 

DD: How did the surroundings of Iceland inspire you as an artist and why did you decided to set the story in this specific location?

Jordan Sullivan: Iceland is one of the youngest bodies of land in the world, so it seemed to have potential to act as this mirror for the inner lives of my characters, both of whom were leaving their youth. The story needed to be shot in an empty and open space, as well as a very beautiful space, and I didn't want to shoot it in America. I wanted these men to be in a completely foreign place. I wanted to go somewhere I had never been before as well, a place I couldn't imagine. Iceland is a place one would go on vacation and that was important because the two men in this book are very much on vacation in some ways, albeit their last. Iceland is a realistic place that they would visit, and realism is at the core of all my work.

Those were always the most beautiful to me. In some ways I imagine some of the pictures in The Young Earth as those photographs - the forgotten ones, the ones that didn't make it in the family or vacation album. I wanted this story to sort of be like this mundane document of a vacation that turns into this whole existential and tragic thing. I really love that film Gerry by Gus Van Sant, where these two friends just go hiking and get lost and the film becomes this massive portrait of life and death and survival, but in this really quiet and understated way. 

DD: Does shooting the images in 35 mm and Polaroid as opposed to digital film make the process feel more precious in a way, or was there another reason for choosing this medium?

Jordan Sullivan: When I shot this a year ago, I didn't really know how to use a digital camera and didn't own one. 35mm was all I really knew how to shoot. Also, my vacations with my family were always shot on film, so I wanted to bring that quality to the book. Both the characters in the story are children of the film era, children of the 90's. 

DD: In the images human and nature, the tiny object and the panoramic landscape appear to contrast one another. What was your intention when using these two ‘opposites’ throughout the series?

Jordan Sullivan: I wanted the pictures to seem as if they were shot from multiple perspectives - first, second, and third - so I needed vast, intimate and omniscient views. Some pictures could be from the narrator's perspective, others from the earth's perspective. There's very much a back and forth between the portraits and landscapes. I wanted the images in the book to sort of grow like a vine, tangling all these people and places together. The characters in the story are trying to connect with themselves, the world and their past. I wanted to express that pictorially through all these different juxtapositions of people and nature. Also, the idea of time in a landscape is very interesting to me. My friend Emma Phillips, who is a wonderful landscape photographer, introduced me to this, and I really thought about it a lot when making The Young Earth, as well as the ways in which a place or a person can trigger a memory. A place can very much embody the feeling of a person and vice versa. We are always existing in so many places at once; the present and the past, our internal and external spaces, are constantly colliding wherever we are. The narrator of the story is simultaneously exploring all these parts of the world and himself. He's coming to grips with the inevitable death of his best friend, looking at this foreign place, roaming through landscapes, investigating the history of that land, and recalling his own history, the things he's buried, forgotten and been too afraid to confront.

DD: How do you see the overarching themes of mortality, friendship, love, youth and beauty portrayed in the final images?

Jordan Sullivan: The last chapter of the book is my favourite. It's filled with light and joy. It's a beginning of sorts. I wanted the end to be a celebration filled with hope and light and colour. I love that scene in Akira Kurosawa's Dreams where the funeral procession is a parade with singing, dancing and laughter. The Young Earth is in many ways a celebration of endings and death.

DD: What can we expect next from the Wandering Days series?

Jordan Sullivan: Wandering Days is a quartet of books. The second I finished shooting in NYC recently, the third will be shot in Naples, Italy this summer, and the fourth will be shot in the southern United States. It should keep me busy for a while.

Jordan Sullivan's The Young Earth is published 31 October, available for pre-order from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
For print sales please contact Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art: www.phhfineart.com.

www.jordan-sullivan.com

Read the full article here.

The Y-3 Anthology for Dazed Digital

Founded in 2003, Y-3 (the 'Y' representing Yohji and the '3' corresponding with Adidas' three iconic stripes) was one of the first labels to actually design sportswear, as opposed to purely looking at its functionality. Apart from fusing innovative sportswear technology with Yamamoto’s avant-garde creations, Y-3 also embarks upon artistic projects season after season, including floating runways and laser light shows. The brand’s latest endeavour sees Y-3 packaged into 150 square metres of futuristic retail space for the label’s second London store in Covent Garden, which opens today.

In honour of the label’s tenth anniversary, Dazed Digital looks back at the untold stories behind the most striking campaigns in Y-3’s history.

SS09Photography by Craig McDean

The “synthetic energy” of urban life is reflected in the surveillance camera-like imagery and colour-saturated cityscapes of McDean’s campaign, echoing the Dan Flavin-esque presentation of the SS 09 collection.

SS10Photography by Alasdair McLellan

Coinciding with the 2010 World Cup, this campaign features laser-cut pieces inspired by the moment when a soccer ball hits the net and is presented on the likes of Zinedine Zidane and Mr. Yamamoto himself.

AW05Photography by Matt Jones

They say there’s no second chance to make a first impression and Y-3’s premiere campaign, shot in the Peruvian desert, did not disappoint. Jones’ energetic photography fittingly sets the collection’s work wear details, eastern folklore-inspired colour palette, soft nappa leathers and constructivism-derived prints against a barren landscape backdrop. 

AW08Photography by Mario Sorrenti

Sorrenti’s graphic imagery solidifies the sleek urbanite feel of Y-3’s functional yet elegant aesthetic. The black and white garments represent a pure Yohji design mentality, the three stripes make a cheeky right corner appearance and legendary creative director and Y-3 collaborator Doug Lloyd gives the imagery his quintessential polish as well. 

SS12Photography by Collier Schorr

Schorr describes her collage campaign as being “inspired by the modernist literature and architecture that is in itself a fusion of political and architectural mantras, both dreamy and concrete”. Entitled ‘The Precipice’, the resulting imagery explores the relationship between the human body and its environment through a fictious travelogue and 1960s Brasília.

AW09Photography by Craig McDean

Karmen Pedaru (dressed in the season’s sharply-executed menswear) makes her way through a giant video landscape for McDean’s take on the interplay between fantasy and reality, natural exploration and the electronic age.

SS13Photography by Pierre Debusschere

The soft silhouettes of the season melt into one trippy structure thanks to the techniques of visual artist and Dazed Collaborator Pierre Debusschere, showing off the creative’s Iceland - and Northern Lights - inspired digital work alongside the styling of Jay Massacret.

AW12Photography by Collier Schorr

Seeing as Yamamoto’s collections have traversed us from places like Mongolia to England, it was only a matter of time before a Y-3 campaign explored the art of travel. ‘Beneath, Between, Beyond’ combines the landscape photography of David Benjamin Sherry with Schorr’s depiction of two internally daydreaming travellers, capturing the sense of losing oneself in both travel and love.

SS07

Photography by Mario Sorrenti

Through stark, black and white photography, Sorrenti delves into the purist side of things for his first Y-3 campaign. Despite the collection’s initial designs of digital floral prints and billowing shapes, the final images possess an undeniably sharp and precise focus. 

SS06Photography by Matt Jones

Jones’ last campaign for Y-3 was inspired by the most pivotal dance movements of the 20th century, from New York disco to Argentinian tango (energised with a splash of fiery orange nonetheless). The athletic collection didn’t only mark a collaboration with Adidas global creative director Michael Michalsky, but also marked the brand’s first show in New York.

AW11Photography by Alasdair McLellan

AW11 proved to be another showcase of McLellan’s trademark British sensibility and taste for subcultures - after all, the man did get his start depicting club goers in Leeds during the late 90s. This time, his army of choice are wool coat-cocooned models, photographed in the gritty surroundings of Hudson River Park.

Read the full article here.

Percy Lau and Cat Potter Studio Visit for Dazed Digital

Dazed collaborates with YKK to showcase and support new design talent for the sophomore edition of our New Breed project. As the largest manufacturer of fastenings in the world, YKK also sponsors the coveted ITS ACCESSORIES award. This platform for young designers challenges participants to incorporate the company’s zips, buttons and more in innovative ways, with one winner receiving the financial and industry-focused support to produce their collection.

After previously paying a visit to YKK brand ambassador and shoe maverick Kei Kagami, Dazed Digital headed to the London studios of competition finalists Percy Lau and Cat Potter to discuss their creative process, points of inspiration and how they are breathing new life into zips, snap buttons & co.

Percy Lau

“In the very beginning, I wanted to make jewellery to make people happy. Now I want to make pieces that make people think,” says accessories and jewellery designer Percy Lau.

Her latest collection “Seeing is Believing?” is a range of clear resin eyewear that utilises eye-catching optical illusion techniques. Having focused on mathematics, physics and chemistry prior to beginning her university studies, the range provided the perfect excuse for Lau to reference her other professional passion. “I used loads of physics theory about refraction for that work. My educational background helps me a lot. Science, techniques and materials inspire me the most,” she says.

Spectacles are also the focus of her designs for the ITS ACCESSORIES project. “Eyewear is a symbol of your horizon so I love to design those kinds of pieces. With YKK being a zip product, I thought of it as something that can open and close a horizon,” the 24-year-old explains. In this instance, she incorporates the element into multifunctional sunglasses/spectacles/reading glasses hybrids. Once again her love of science glimmers through as Lau drills, saws, moulds and pierces her pieces with an almost mathematical precision.

Although she just graduated from Central Saint Martins this summer, the young designer has already won competitions like the Swarovski live project thanks to her otherworldly creations, ranging from kingfisher millinery sculptures to acrylic fingernail dentures to nose-shaped necklaces. Lau plans to set up her own studio post-graduation, but ultimately wants to “influence and inspire others, and change their mind about the jewellery and accessories industry”. Naturally this also entails not letting her creations be pigeonholed into any genre of aesthetics. “I don’t want to label myself in terms of style. Style cannot explain anything. It’s more about doing your own thing rather than putting something onto ourselves,” Lau states, soon adding: “In design, if it's a good concept, it doesn’t matter how it develops.” 

Cat Potter

When Cat Potter presented her graduate footwear collection in 2012, her masterfully crafted creations immediately caught the eye of footwear giant Jimmy Choo, who awarded her the MA Final Collection Award for Excellence. Fusing the ancient material wood with modern digital techniques, Potter’s architectural designs were conceived using CAD/CAM software, created around the 3D scan of a foot and then precisely carved using 3-axis milling machines. “I don’t see footwear as just a practical object. Even if it looks like a shoe and does everything that a shoe is meant to do, I still think that it should be able to stand in an environment by itself and bring something to that environment,” the Swiss native explains. 

Having previously completely her studies in fine art and curation, Potter finally found her vocation after enrolling in a diploma course at London College of Fashion’s Cordwainer’s College. “I thought, well it’s year, might as well see how it goes. I immediately loved it, this mixture between sculpture and the craft of footwear. On my first day I knew this was exactly what I want to do,” she enthusiastically says.

An avid photographer in her spare time, the 27-year-old finds inspiration in themes including European folklore culture, furniture and Swedish architecture. For her latest project with YKK, she is working on vacuum-forming leather around wooden high heels, fastened up through the use of snap buttons. “Working with YKK has been really interesting. I went to their offices in London and they have so many fittings and fixtures that I found it hard to choose just one. It was quite challenging because I would never use zippers or poppers, but it made me think about my aesthetic in a different way,” the designer states.

Whether she is experimenting with new fastening techniques or digital software, one thing that always remains is Potter’s love for artisanal design, something which can be traced back to her childhood. “When I was younger I lived near a jewellery designer. There were these little boxes full of gold, brass, and other bits and pieces. I just remember going over the top of the table and staring at all of them,” she recounts. “It was a beautiful workshop. It’s that kind of life that I still want really - having a studio and being able to create what you want with really good materials.”

Read the full article here.

Kei Kagami Studio Visit for Dazed Digital

Dazed and YKK join forces to celebrate the spirit of fashion craftsmanship for the 2013 edition of the International Talent Support’s ITS ACCESSORIES competition. The contest is sponsored by the Japanese fastening manufacturer giant, which selects a small group of upcoming designers to reinterpret their products through innovative creative solutions. Aside from a prize of €10,000 for the winner, all finalists will be able to glean advice through their process with exceptional womenswear/accessories designer and YKK ambassador Kei Kagami, who also teaches hands-on workshops for the company at prestigious fashion schools around the world. In a prelude to our series of upcoming studio visits to ITS finalists of the past and present, Dazed stopped by his North London studio to learn about Kagami’s work methods and commitment to artisanal design.

THE KAGAMI WORKSPACE

No doubt about it, Kei Kagami lives and breathes the creative process. His workspace is filled with all aspects of it: multiple clothing rails full of archive pieces, rows upon rows of fascinating footwear constructions, mannequins hung with brand label tags, stacks and stacks of fabrics, sewing machines, mechanical tools, even a picture of him riding a motorcycle from his Selfridges Bright Young Things window installation. “Francis Bacon’s studio really encouraged me. Basically it’s a mess but I thought it was brilliant,” he laughs. But perhaps the abundance of materials and creations only helps envelope the designer all the more in his creative world. Classical instrumental music plays in the background, adding a sense of zen-like concentration to the sensory overload of it all.

TRAINED IN TOKYO

Hailing from Tokyo, Kagami’s original career path saw him pursue a bachelor’s degree in architecture, something he soon supplemented with a simultaneous tailoring diploma course at Bunka Fashion College. “At that time I didn’t really put a boundary between fashion or architecture. For me it was one and the same thing: starting from something flat and two-dimensional and making it three-dimensional,” he explains. However, fashion soon won him over. “I just wanted to create something for myself and express what I wanted. With clothing, I can design, draw patterns, stitch and wear it. I thought that is fantastic. I can express myself in each process and manage everything by myself up until the very end,” Kagami says.


WORKING ALONGSIDE HIS HERO

Having held a fascination for all things British since his childhood, the young designer came to London in 1989 to work alongside his hero John Galliano. After three seasons, the studio declared bankruptcy and relocated to Paris. Kagami decided to stay in London and enroll in the MA Fashion course at Saint Martins college, graduating alongside Alexander McQueen and Wakako Kishimoto. But while some of his peers went on to have houses backed by major luxury groups, Kagami stayed true to his craft-focused roots. “I don’t really like fashion. I love clothes, creation and making conceptual things,” he openly admits, adding: “I’d never been fascinated by money. If you get a job from a commercial company, obviously you get paid a lot, but I rather preferred making what I wanted.”

A LOVE OF CRAFTMANSHIP

Kagami describes his love for handmade and unusual creations as “a matter of craftsmanship. I don’t want to have a boundary between thinking and actual making. Intrinsic, genuine creation is both. I have always had that kind of spirit.” When it comes to this introverted style of production, the designer literally calls his studio home. “I have a favourite area in the back of my studio, surrounded by many machineries, which I love. Usually we work on shoes there. Sometimes when things are busy, I will sleep in my studio upstairs and often go to this space on my own before I go to bed,” he says.


FUNCTIONAL BEAUTY

His creation over a corporate way of thinking struck a chord with YKK, who began their collaboration with the designer when he proposed a design to them in 1998. Said piece was a dress constructed entirely of zippers. “The idea was about using zips as a textile but still each piece had a function. I don’t like using things just for decoration. Each part has a meaning. That functional beauty is an important element for me,” Kagami states. Since then, the international manufacturer has continued to work closely with the designer. “I like working for YKK because it has an educational value and is not business-minded,” he says. With the company’s backing, he has been able to create radical designs like resin fibreglass and mechanically constructed metal footwear, but Kagami is quick to admit that his avant-garde ideas don’t come easily. “To do something new in fashion is very, very difficult, so many things have already been done. I do struggle each time, to be honest. That’s why I try to use different materials, I believe it is still possible to create something new,” the designer explains.

DO SOMETHING RADICAL

This concept of the new seems to become all the more difficult in the frantic pace of today’s fashion cycle. “Nowadays things are too mass-produced, too commercial and everyone basically works in fashion as a business for money. To break it, you have to do something extraordinary and extreme. If someone doesn’t do something creative, eventually culture will stop developing. I’m more interested in contributing to culture or education in the end. If I could be an influential designer to someone else, that would make me more than happy,” Kagami notes. His words of advice to young designers starting out? “Do something radical and truly express yourself rather than thinking about what other people are doing. The power of the trend vector in fashion is too strong, new designers should break it to keep their identity.”


Read the full article here.

J.W. Anderson Interview for Dazed Digital

In between sending male models in ruffled shorts and strapless tops down the runway, rolling out the sophomore collection of his successful collaboration with Topshop and designing the premier capsule collection for Versus Versace, this season sees J.W. Anderson launch his first ever advertising campaign.

Created in collaboration with Dazed co-founder Jefferson Hack’s MAD London agency and art directed by Dazed & Confused's creative director Christopher Simmonds, the images feature new faces Lucan Gillespie and Oliver O’ Brien lensed by Jamie Hawkesworth and styled by Benjamin Bruno. The seemingly simple yet striking photographs offer a tactile visual experience upon closer inspection: soft car carpet replaces the ubiquitous cold studio setting whilst the shiny lacquer of a crimson car door or sheen of a ruched leather dress juxtaposes the matt texture of the foam menswear and knitted womenswear constructions. In short, just as with each one of Anderson’s collections, there is a lot more to these visuals than first meets the eye.

Dazed Digital: What made it feel right do your first advertising campaign this season?

Jonathan Anderson: I was approached by Jefferson. He triggered in my head to try to capture an image of something. He got it. It was just a point and level at which we were at. To do imagery is ultimately like a full reflection, to be where you are and sum it up into a single image or a series of images. It gives you an overview of what the overall character is.

DD: What was the concept of the campaign?

Jonathan Anderson: It was a view take of a boy and a girl; they were suspended architectures within a space. The objects like the car door and lights are used to articulate the silhouette.

DD: What was it about that idea that was in unison with the visions of both collections?

Jonathan Anderson: In terms of where we are at the moment - in terms of design, brand, where I am at at the moment - it’s about this idea of a shared wardrobe. It’s never become about gender per se, it’s just that in the beginning women started buying clothing from the men’s collections. That’s how it started, it’s an articulation of style really.

I like the ambiguity; the idea of the girl being always posed on the floor and grounded, which to me makes a different silhouette, whereas the man is more of an elongated silhouette. There’s something quite interesting in terms of the proportional heights of it that balances out the balance of power in the image.

DD: Why did you decide to use car carpet to line the floor and the walls of the set, as well as car pieces as props?

Jonathan Anderson: It was taking a car map and the idea of it consuming the space, the mundane and the beige. It softened the environment to give it warmth. The abstraction of the car pieces are mere embedded objects to glorify the silhouette. I always like red and beige together, the tonal texture of those things in the plastic-ness of the car and the dryness of the carpet.

DD: Speaking of casting, what was the reason behind choosing new faces to front the campaign?

Jonathan Anderson: I love when Benjamin Bruno and Jamie Hawkesworth work together; I’ve known Jamie from way, way back when I first started and then Ben and him started to work together. What’s great is that they are able to build characters. Fashion is about characters. All imagery - no matter what it is - has to feel like something you want to rip out and stick on a wall. It was about trying to find characters no matter what form. We did a lot of casting to find who the boy and the girl could be and what was modern about them. I think you look at good imagery as imagery that you want to keep. Certain imagery you will remember and certain imagery you will destroy. The idea here is to try and create imagery that you will remember.

DD: Was there anyone in particular that inspired the way you think about fashion advertising as more of an art form rather than a commercial mode of communication?

Jonathan Anderson: Certainly the team inspired me, Ben and Jamie inspired me massively. Every time they do something together, I find it’s the most modern thing I’ve seen. That’s what it’s about and for me it fits the brand and with what I like. It’s theatrically awkward. I love the idea of awkwardness in people, there’s something so beautiful in the awkward self.

DD: Which is quite refreshing when a lot of advertising is so highly stylised and photoshopped.

Jonathan Anderson: I just don't think you need to be sold something. Consumers are intelligent and want to see what you’re thinking. Good advertising makes you think. No matter if it’s fashion or anything else, it just makes you think. Ultimately the idea of the image is for you to take away what you want from it.

DD: There was such a big controversy around your AW 13 menswear collection, people were shocked to see men in such feminine clothing. What did that reaction say to you?

Jonathan Anderson: I never really thought in that way. When you’re working so insulated in a studio, you don't see the reality of what will be when you let it go into public domain. Do I care what the reaction is? I find it interesting. Last season really triggered something in people. We are still not comfortable with men and fashion. It’s never been more fashionable to like fashion, but men in fashion is very hard.

I didn't feel like I could find anything modern for men at that point. I didn’t find styling modern, it was too controlled. Even in casting, none of the new kids were exciting enough. There was something that was lacking and for me it had to go to a modular state. It had to go to the mundane and be selfish in a weird way; focus on how to cut a neckline and how to improve something or how to just find something.

You have to be ready to make mistakes. The harsher the criticism, the better the brand will be. You’ve got to roll with the punches. You need the criticism to be able to compel yourself into something else, reject something or not reject something because you believe in it that strongly. That’s the whole point of this exercise. Especially menswear is like a laboratory of working out everything, because it’s where you can articulate into womenswear. Whatever's not modern on a woman can be modern on a man in terms of line or garment and what is not so modern on a man can be modern on a woman. It’s ultimately about trying to find modernity, awkwardness and wrongness that makes you feel uncomfortable. Does it work? I don’t know. Will it work? I have no idea. It doesn’t really matter, it’s about a process.

DD: You were saying this campaign is more of a reflection of where you’re at in this moment. Where do you see your brand, yourself and your advertising as an extension of your brand going forward from this point?

Jonathan Anderson: I’ve been going since 2007. A lot of people think we’ve come out of nowhere, but we have been working a long time to get where we are. Fashion today moves very quickly compared to what it used to, but I feel you have to keep new with what is happening all the time. You have to keep everything to a certain level. Collections are there to make people think, shows are shows, advertising has to be an extension of what you are thinking and ultimately, you let the consumer decide.

This year we’ve got a lot on, it’s going to be a very good year. If we can continue doing advertising, increasing sales and increasing visibility, what will come in the future is to reach the masses. I love when mass media is challenged by what we do. That’s part of the game.

DD: After your latest collaboration with Nikon, do you have any other projects lined up for the future?

Jonathan Anderson: That’s the last of our projects at the moment, but never say never. I really like doing different projects out there. It lets you into a different market, you can explore things you’ve never done before and it's part of the brand. I don't see the brand as a closed door, it never will be. We'll always be open to different collaborations to different things because to me, it’s what keeps it alive.

Read the full article here.

Exclusive: Casely-Hayford Preview for Dazed Digital

Following on from their fashion film collaboration with Sean Frank last season, Casely-Hayford have traded in their hockey sticks for a set of skateboard decks for SS14.

Your average skater may don baggy DC jeans, big-as-bricks Vans, oversized Supreme T-shirts and Stüssy hoodies, but this brand’s subcultural army has a far more refined fashion palette. Their trousers of choice are constructed of Japanese indigo-dyed and embroidered denim, their deconstructed jackets cut with Savile Row-like precision, their tops emblazoned with pixelated prints instead of in-your-face logos and their skateboards made of hand-quilted leather (courtesy of the brand’s new luggage collaboration with H by Harris). The entire collection was appropriately documented at East London-based warehouse-turned-skating space, Quaker Street Bowl.

“Skate has this amazing, raw energy. We were interested in this idea of a new age skater and a subculture existing within popular culture,” explains one half of the menswear label, Charlie Casely-Hayford. Together with his father Joe, he researched the scene’s different international reincarnations as a starting point for the new season, with a photograph of Apache skateboarders by Dustinn Craig proving to be of particular significance. “It just felt so modern, the fusion of these two cultures that don’t really belong together. We were looking at how you can integrate skate culture into your own society. Hearing about plans to shut down the Southbank skate space just reinforced our interest in this idea of a colony of people creating a micro culture within a mass cultural space,” he says.

Although the young designer admits to dabbling in skateboarding during his youth, his own relationship to the scene is more one of appreciation rather than participation. “I’m interested in the authenticity of the lifestyle. Skaters don’t just skate, it’s an entire world that everything is built around. There aren’t many things like that, where you completely immerse yourself in it,” he notes. The sense of liberation and freedom within the skating world also resulted in a more relaxed look this season around, evidenced in pieces such as a charcoal blazer with lapel-shaped cutouts, drawstring waisted wool trousers and a bomber jacket with an inner racerback construction.

It isn’t just aesthetics that attracted the father and son design duo to the world of skateboarding. There is also the aspect of a tribe-like culture, identical to those existing within fashion. “The idea of the Casely-Hayford tribe and what it stands for - this transcultural mix, where you take elements from all the different cultures around you to define you’re identity - is one of the main things that drives us each season,” Casely-Hayford says.

While sports culture is an integral part of the brand’s English sartorialism meets British anarchism philosophy, sportswear in itself has undeniably become a deeply embedded part of UK culture - chav connotations and all. “Sportswear is such a big influence for us because it’s almost like a British national identity,” he explains. “The uniform of our biggest subcultures now is a head-to-toe sportswear look. When people look back at our time, will that be what they see as reflecting the disillusioned youth of this period? Sportswear is so prevalent and such a prominent part of society, you can’t deny it.”


Read the full article here.

Q&A: John Maybury for Dazed Digital

No elaborate sets. No orchestrated movie soundtrack. No colossal casts. Just 72 minutes of Tilda Swinton giving her all on-screen. But as John Maybury’s 1992 film Man to Man proves, that’s all you need. In his adaption of Manfred Karge’s play, the British actress takes on over a dozen roles in both male and female form, retelling 50 years of German history from alternating personal standpoints.

The films opens with a beer-chugging pensioner by the name of Ella Gericke, a widow who took on the role of her deceased husband as a crane operator in Weimar, Germany. What follows are numerous short monologues set in sparse surroundings such as a haystack background or concrete-floored prison cell, interspersed with black and white archive footage and basic audio elements such as the sound of marching soldiers.

This sparseness of all visual and auditory effects only serves to highlight the strength of Swinton’s performance and makes each scene all the more haunting. With an almost frightening ability she switches from character to character, be it a rowdy man slapping his prosthetic cock on the table screaming “Ich bin ein deutscher Mann” (I am a German man), a smooth-talking would-be Clark Gable or a coquettish Snow White lookalike nicknamed Püppchen.

Although the film may start and end with the humourous lines of “another night of rubbish on the telly”, Man to Man proves to move far beyond this self-deprecating slogan. It’s a study in gender and human existence, an emotional historic recountal, but above all a demonstration of Tilda Swinton’s acting range and aptitude. 

Dazed spoke to director John Maybury about the challenges of adapting Karge’s austere theatre play to the big screen, cinematic collage language born out of necessity and his verdict about the experimental piece of cinema two decades on.

Dazed Digital: What initially sparked your interest in this project?

John Maybury: In actual fact it was Tilda Swinton that approached me and asked if I would be interested in adapting the stage play for her. I’d worked with her and Derek Jarman on several projects before that: War Requiem, The Last of England, Jubilee. She’d performed the play at the Royal Courts in London before and it was a very austere, minimal stage production, so what was interesting to me was adapting the monologue and turning it into a film using what was then the contemporary digital language. In a way, I was trying to make an MTV kind of experiment. It was like a bridge; I had been making experimental films for about ten years already at that point but also started making pop videos. It was interesting trying to combine those two languages.

DD: What was the process like of adapting Manfred Karge’s play?

John Maybury: What intrigued me was what you can’t do on stage and can do with film. You can get a subtlety of performance in a close-up that you can’t do in a play. The first thing we did was Tilda came round to my flat and I had a little Hi8 video camera and just sat her on a chair in front of me and had her perform the piece straight to me. We watched it together and used that as a point of departure for how to develop different ideas.

In the theatre production, she was alone on stage with just a couple of minimal props. The audience had to do all the work themselves, they had to go in their imagination on a journey with her, almost like in a radio play. But with cinema and television, audiences demand a bit more. We recognised quite quickly that there was an opportunity for her, although she was playing the same character all the way through, to actually play different aspects of that character and to visualise those in different ways.

DD: There is a very intense connection with Tilda when watching the film because it is shot so close-up, in some scenes the camera even focuses in on her right eye.

John Maybury: Exactly. You can do those things with cinema that you just can’t to do in the theatrical situation, but also all the way through I was deliberately referencing other work. When the mouth is speaking through the distorted magnifying glass, that’s a reference to the Samuel Beckett play, Not I. When she is sitting there talking about Kristallnacht and a bucket of blood falls down on her, that’s a reference to the Viennese Actionist artists from the 50s and early 60s.

There are lots of different little references to the German arts, the Weimar Republic and the Weimar cabaret. In the archive footage I've used bits of the fantastic Dziga Vertov film, Man with a Movie Camera. There are lots of different bits and pieces and layers, but it’s quaint how in 1992 a lot of that was quite cutting edge [laughs].

DD: What was it like working with Tilda Swinton on the production?

John Maybury: Tilda, Derek Jarman and I were all great friends. We had worked together before on Derek’s productions which were very emotional, very intense and very personal. It was just friends collaborating, it had that feeling of a bunch of kids having a mad time.

But for some reason, whenever I work with Tilda, I always give her horrible false teeth and make her look really ugly. What’s refreshing about Tilda is that she does not have any vanity at all. Although people know her as one of the world’s best dressed women, if you look at her film work across the board, she’s very happy to go to places as an actor that a lot of actresses just won't go to - they’re too concerned about their image. Tilda has got that weird balance where she’s an intellectual but also an incredibly beautiful creature, yet there isn’t a contradiction there. Those two characters coexist quite happily.

DD: What style were you trying to achieve when selecting the accompanying audio and visual footage?

John Maybury: The archive footage from various time periods gave another texture to the film, but also it was layering up images in the same way that the text layers up images in your mind. It helps you as a member of the audience to construct an image in your head from the experiences that she is describing. In a funny way, it was asking the audience to do the editing in their head as they were watching it. That’s really the idea behind it, plus we only had about £110,000 to shoot the whole thing, so it was also born out of necessity.

We shot it in ten days in a studio and I went up to Berlin to do some exterior shots there which I tried to treat to make them look like archive footage. It’s about applying a collage language. For the sound effects, it’s interesting again that you can create pictures by manipulating sound in the different levels of the performance, whether she is whispering or by adding sound effects underneath her monologue. It’s really just about making a collage to support her performance all the way down the line.

DD: How do you see the themes of sexuality, life and death being addressed in the film?

John Maybury: Believe it or not, Man to Man is actually based on the true story of a woman who lived disguised as her husband in Germany. Manfred Karge adapted it from news items he found in old papers from the 20s. So even though it’s quite an extraordinary, fantastical, out there film, there is that thread of truth running through it that gives it a power.

For me, it’s a tale about survival techniques. It’s something that as a a gay man I’m fully aware of, the different strategies you have to try and apply just to navigate life. I’ve just been watching stuff recently on the news about what’s going on in Russia with the treatment of gay, lesbian and transgender people there. In some parts of the world the treatment of outsiders, if you want to call us that, is still very difficult; so the film has its own relevance in that respect for sure. In times of recession and when things get tough, it can actually provoke the very worst in people, culture and societies at large, as well as the best.

Aging is another subject in the play, but you’re as young as you feel. I think that’s why Manfred Karge’s text is really clever because it does touch very lightly on all those subjects: identity, sexuality, time passing and memories. It does it in a very interesting way and I hope that the film, although it is much more visceral and difficult, takes the audience on that same kind of journey.

DD: How do you feel when watching the film now?

John Maybury: Looking back, the film was quite radical at that time. The content was really strong, it touched something in people. Obviously, that mostly has to do with the quality of Tilda’s performance, but also with Manfred Karge’s text. Between those two things there’s an awful lot of complex subject matter being woven together, but I hope that the film helps those things come out in different ways – supports them in some places, underlines certain points or maybe contradicts them in other places. But my main objective was always that it would make an audience think.

After recently watching the film for the first time in twenty years, I have to say I like it a lot. I like the person who made it and it’s a nice reminder to me that I should be prepared to take risks. I’ve done big productions but you maybe get into a comfort zone of doing things in a more slick, traditional way and actually, I like that person who was brave enough to be that experimental. I’m quite happy that he should come back again every now and then. 

Man to Man screens at the ICA until Thursday 20 June.


Read the full article here.

The Occult of Paraphotography for Dazed Digital

In attempt to capture the intangible and investigating all things esoteric, mystical, and supernatural, On Paraphotography: Uncertainty, the Occult and the Uncanny is an exploration into the aesthetic realms of supernatural representation through photography. Exhibiting at Harlan Levey Projects in Brussels, the show features the work of Czech photographer Tereza Zelenkova, AnOther contributor Paulina Otylie Surys, the 1930s photographer Joel-Peter Witkin, and Jeffrey Silverthorne. Here, its curator Brad Feuerhelm discusses the concept of ‘the other’, Catholicism versus occult ideology and post-LaVeyan Satanism:

Dazed Digital: Where did the inspiration for this exhibit come from?
Brad Feuerhelm: I have been after this esoteric material for some time now. I was selling a lot of it to clients abroad when one day I just started holding it back, as it was too fascinating to continually sell. I'm interested in the many forms of esoteric and pagan thought as the current norm of religious aptitude is a bore for me. Being without a designated religion myself, the appeal to older customs and rituals provides a stepping stone into a historic territory that photography just marginally covers.

DD: What is it about the occult that fascinates you?
Brad Feuerhelm: The idea that people believe it. It is a very intense system of practice, and in order to fully understand ‘the occult’ one must spend a majority of one’s life in total belief of the other while following a very disciplined series of defined steps in order to achieve spiritual clarity. I am mostly drawn to the aesthetics.

DD: Why do you think does this topic cause such polarising reactions of either fascination or fear?
Brad Feuerhelm: Catholicism's massive crush on occult ideology has been embedded in society at large for 600 years. If you live in ‘the norm’, you will be inflicted with anxiety towards ‘the other’. It causes irrational behaviour and fear, much like everything these days... a completely emotional response devoid of clarity to reason and the acceptance of different ideologies.

DD: How do you see the idea of the mystical and creativity correlating to one another?
Brad Feuerhelm: There is definitely some correlation there. Many of the rites and rituals associated with the occult and perhaps Left Hand post-LaVeyan Satanism suggests a quest for the now and unique. It is about the self and maturing in such a way as to promote creative thinking and individual thought. They are actually quite similar.

DD: What does each individual artist bring to the show?
Brad Feuerhelm: Paulina Otylie Surys and Tereza Zelenkova are both pillars of creative photography. Surys’ work echoes the boudoir chamber of dark light and Zelenkova's practice is about the subtle Czech penchant for melancholia. Joel-Peter Witkin incorporates the ritual of death as does Jeffrey Silverthorne. The process of the uncanny and uncertain is delivered through understanding the body in transition.

DD: What would you like the viewers to take away from this exhibition?
Brad Feuerhelm: A sense of viewing something they have not quite seen before. There is very little horror associated with the show, so the shock element is not there unless you really want it to be. Perhaps if you are faint of heart or brain, it may leave you feeling like you need to commune with your deity further. That would also be a fine way to leave.


Read the full article here.

Dazed Digital

Check out my recent contributions to the Dazed Digital blog below.

Images taken from dazeddigital.com