Fashion films get their own close-up as they evolve to rival catwalk shows

By admin | December, 4, 2012

Fashion film has evolved beyond videos of catwalks – and the big labels are starting to take notice

A blonde woman in a red fetish-style bikini moves to the slow beat of Love To Love You and an undercurrent of soft, ecstatic moans. She talks quietly in voiceover about her muscle-bound body: ‘I feel different to most women – stronger, leaner.’ She performs bicep curls with sculpted gold weights, the moans become louder.

Directed by Elisha Smith-Leverock, I Want Muscle won Grand Prize at last year’s ASVOFF Fashion Film Festival. Female bodybuilder Kizzy Vaines wore clothes by David Koma, Husam al Odeh, Lyall Hakaraia and Maria Francesca Pepe. The aim of the three-minute short, says Smith-Leverock, was to ‘play with taboos and gender stereotypes and to explore a different kind of female beauty’.

This weekend, the fifth ASVOFF film festival takes place at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. Over three days, visitors will be treated to filmwork as equally provocative and polished as Smith-Leverock’s.

Launched in 2008, ASVOFF has almost single-handedly encouraged an industry to reconsider the way it presents itself in film.

‘Fashion film is a vibrant, relatively new applied art form with huge potential,’ says founder Diane Pernet. ‘We’re still exploring exactly what the parameters are but I suppose the easiest way to define it is this: film where fashion is the protagonist, rather than a prop.’ (….)

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By Metro.co.uk