When the Cannes Film Festival closes this week, it will be with one of two new biopics of Chanel: ‘Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky,” starring Anna Mouglialis, who, not-so-coincidentally, is the face of Chanel’s Allure perfume. But although many will flock to see the film, there are other fashion films of a different sort currently attracting far larger audiences. Where are these blockbusters, you wonder?
Online, my dear Watson. Online.
Case in point: a short film by Halston of Dree Hemingway, Ernest’s great granddaughter, sprinting through the night streets of New York in full length lemon yellow dress. It was an instant viral success, resulting in a waiting list of 25,000 for the dress. The film was released on 350 strategic fashion blogs to “ensure a global message,” said chief executive Bonnie Tahar, not to mention re-establishing the brand’s identity and reaching an enormous swathe of potential customers.
Halston isn’t the only brand to see the potential of combining cinema and the internet. Hussein Chalayan, Gareth Pugh and Alice Temperley have all begun using film to create an alternative to the conventional catwalk show. Meanwhile, Viktor & Rolf, Charlotte Ronson, and The Row (the label founded by the Olsen twins) have made films instead of traditional look-books, aka the photographic representation of every item in their collection.
In The Row’s case, this took the form of a cool girl, in a super cool apartment, trying on clothes that just happened to be from the spring/summer line.
“[Film] allows the customer to see the garments on a real person,” says Creative Director and owner of The Row (with her sister Mary-Kate) Ashley Olsen. “The response was overwhelmingly positive; it is a great tool for selling merchandise.” No wonder the new generation of e-commerce sites such as Simon Fuller’s new site, Fashionair, which launches this summer, will be using films to give fashion advice and to show clothes. Net-a-porter are also planning films of designer interviews for their site.
Beyond merchandising, however, Chanel’s Karl Lagerfeld likes to use film to document his fashion shoots (see his Chanel blog), while Mulberry’s consultant brand director Georgia Fendley favours celluloid for revealing the “behind the scenes” action of a fashion show in their stores around the world. “It is a great way to convey the personality of the brand,” she says.
Indeed, for many there’s a democratic appeal in knowing that the filmed catwalk experience is not exclusively for the few hundred invite-only press and buyers at the bi-annual circus of fashion shows in Milan, Paris, New York and London, but for anyone who can make it to a virtual front row.
And it’s an efficient fiscal move. As Alice Temperley, who produced a film of her autumn/winter ‘09 collection, says, “It made more sense than spending a quarter of a million pounds on a show”, one that would be seen only once by a limited number of people. According to Anthony Shurmer, director of the film studio Spring 69 (which works with Mulberry and Agent Provocateur, among others), “fashion film is a way for brands to ensure they get their product seen by the people that didn’t buy Vogue this month, but do have the internet” – or, as it happens, might be taking a stroll in a city.
If you were to pass through New York’s Times Square during the first week of May, for example, your eye probably would have been drawn to the giant digital billboards owned by Clear Channel playing filmmaker and fashion stylist Liz Goldwyn’s new piece, “Underwater Ballet”, a dance-meets-fashion short seen through a haze of water. Its combination of art and advertising drives home an increasingly relevant question: do we need the catwalk tents when we’ve got pixels?
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Alice Temperley: ‘Empress of the Orient’
www.starworksny.com/temperley/microsite/installationvideo.html
The Row
www.the-row.com
Chanel
www.chanel.com/fashion/7-fashion-trends#7-fashion-trends
Liz Goldwyn
www.lgoldwynfilms.com
Halston
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWZAhcdi8eY
Gucci
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykXkmVURI-w
Charlotte Ronson
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgURWZvXrJU
Agent Provocateur
www.agentprovocateur.com/experience-witches.html
Gareth Pugh
www.showstudio.com/project/insensate
