The Hideaway

Fashion In Film

INTERVAL

Director/ Jamie Isaia @ Art + Commerce

Designer/ Hussein Chalayan

Cinematographer/ Andreas Von Scheele, Stephen Blaise

Editors/ Catherine Camille Cushman, Jamie Isaia

Stylist/ Ben Sturgill

Makeup/ Yuka Washizu

Hair/ Wesley O'Meara

Models/ Ali Micheals @ DNA, Daria Strokous @ IMG, Olga Maliouk @ Marilyn

Sound Design/ Casey Smith

Video/ Courtesy of Fashion 16X9©

Visit for Video/ Fashion 16X9©

Print Editorial media is so passé these days and what with the economic climate and restrictions designers are experimenting with creative flair and new media. Film is being used as a substitute for catwalk shows which means it is far more cost efficient, and allows a wider audience to experience it.

Film medium gives designers another tool to express themselves, offering another dimension.

The influences, thought process, and narrative a designer was working with for a collection is revealed and exposed with their control.

Erwin Blumenfeld

1950’s – film experiments (One, Two and Three) were produced for Vogue and Harpers Bazzar. They were extremely innovative for the time, different angles, techniques, Colours and camera effects which Blumenfeld experimented with over the 6 years towards the end of his life. They had a poetic nature to them.

FILM EXPERIMENTS IN ADVERTISING: Given Blumenfeld’s antipathy towards his reputation as a commercial artist, advertising films might seem a strange addition to his archive of imagery. Started in 1958 and spanning six years until 1964, the photographer’s cinematic experiments were prompted by the rise of perhaps the greatest commercial force of the century –television. Feeling frustrated with early, rudimentary television advertisements and convinced he could better them, Blumenfeld set about making film tests to show to his biggest clients Helena Rubenstein, Elizabeth Arden, Dayton’s department store in Minneapolis and L’Oreal.

see the video here http://www.showstudio.com/projects/blumenfeld/films/1_lg.html

Close examination of the approximately twenty-five minutes of existing footage reveals that Blumenfeld’s adventures in moving image were anything but mundane corporate fodder, however. To begin with, they were strictly amateur in production. The photographer was a great cinema enthusiast and loved the work of Charlie Chaplin. Upon moving to Paris in the mid-1930s, he worked as a stills assistant to the French filmmaker Jacques Feyder, around whom he learnt enough to master the 16mm medium when working alone. Just as he adored experimenting in the darkroom, Blumenfeld’s son, the writer Yorick Blumenfeld recalls him enjoying the dogged toil of splicing together film strips to craft simple edits.

Neither was Blumenfeld’s mode of creative expression strictly commercial. The tactics and aesthetic appearance of advertising plays only one part in a rich holding of moving imagery that focuses also on stylistic formations in contemporary art, notions of beauty and their application to the photographic shoot and many of the formal devices present in perhaps his strongest photographic period, from the 1930s and 40s. It is in this latter body of work that the photographer reveals himself to be most seduced by the artistic potential of moving fashion imagery, as if proving to himself it was capable of all the sophistication and intellectual aspiration he found so lacking in advertising.

Extract from Show Studio

Guy Bourdin

Guy Bourdin’s films have complex exotic narratives. Vivid colours are synonymous with his photography and they are still apparent in film collectives. They are fragmented moments conducted in video graphical way which build up layers and communicates a visual language in which the audience is invited to interpret.

Guy Bourdin and Richard Avedon are photographers who in my mind are revolutionary geniuses with there film experiments and photography techniques. They set the standards for today’s fashion photographers.

Below is the playlist of the fashion films which were shown at Show Studio Revolution at Somerset House.

Beyonce Sweet Dreams video more than took influence from British design protégé Gareth Pugh- She is also wearing his designs.

Gareth Pugh Launched this art expression film in tandem with his show during Paris Fashion Week, the film was created in collaboration with Ruth Hogben, which showcases the designer's Autumn/Winter 2009 collection. It received a great response, as this was risky territory for a relatively new conceptual designer. The sequence has a sci-fi aesthetic, which mainly focuses on the shapes and silhouettes of the garments, moving, transforming and interchanging. This is a cinematic performance rather than a catwalk is expressing a new visual language. Pugh when asked if he will present in this format in the future he was documented saying that this type of fashion presentation 'depends on what is right for the collection'.

This reminded me of Viktor & Rolfs s/s 2009 digital online catwalk- is this the future was echoed after this controversially was released purely only as an online format. When i first watched this full length (there is an introductory bit before this where Shalom Harlow runs into the dream like grand hallway) I was taken back at how amazing it looked! at a fraction of the cost of a full runway production and eco- friendly links it was only before time this was done, and i was glad it was my favourite duo who broke the mould as they always do and pulled this out of the bag!

Maison Martin Margiela - Make Up Your Mind

This has to my favourite Fashion collab video which I can't help but smile at- all the features such as the infectious sound track, amazing Masion Martin Margiela

Wig Coat!!! are all amazingly produced again the legend that is Nick Knight for show studio.

Prada "Fallen Shadows"

08/09

animation artist Penny Martin created this for prada with very obvious surrelism refrences such as Salvador Dali

Superflat first love by Takashi Murakami for Louis Vuitton. Another feel good short animation where Luxury brand Louis Vuitton attemots to engage a new audience with this wacky creation.

All this information was presented to me as a Lecture on 29.09.09 by Fran Coombs whom was involved in the Fashion Film Festival which brings together filmmakers and artists who create moving images and they expose forgotten hidden gems such as

You wear it well and If looks could kill