Beyonce’s “Lemonade:” We have all seen it, listened to it on repeat, wondered who “Becky” is and admired not only her personal strength to sing about the intimacies of her relationship, but also her strength in standing up as leading voice for the #BlackLivesMatter movement and black women everywhere. Much of the visual content of her film accompaniment to the album demonstrates her black, female voice through fashion. Whether it is hailing back to the slave trade through Victorian dresses or African influence merging with New Orleans roots, Beyonce and her stylist fused many motifs together achieved to rewrite the Black women, not as an “other,” but as “beautiful women that came from Africa and accentuating this beautiful culture and beautiful people.” Fashion in film, therefore, is not merely films about fashion like “Devil Wears Prada,” or that have great fashion like “Breakfast at Tiffanys.” It can have a voice of its own that speaks volumes about social issues. After all, a picture paints a thousands words! So, here are Her Campus’s Top Five Fashion Films.
1. Meet the Wrestlers of the Pink Lake, Senegal by Grace Wales Bonner.
Central Saints Martins graduate, Grace Wales Bonner is of English-Jamaican descent and her interest in black identity and culture has always fused into her designs. Here we see an exploration of the life of Senegal’s best fighter. Directed by Harley Weir and styled by Julia Sarr-Jamois, Wales Bonner’s “Ebonics” collection, worn by the men in the film, takes on all the spiritual and cultural qualities of the West African setting. For more of the designer’s work, be sure to watch her V&A installation.
2. Rolling with Emilio Pucci
Watch a delightful short in which model/skater Martha-Rose Redding pits her boarding skills against two teenage boys. Without any dialogue and with Redding’s dress and the three customised skateboards as the hints of Pucci, this film becomes more about the type of girl, the strong girl, Pucci clothes are for.
3. Delpozo SS16
This avant-garde, surrealist fashion film featuring Delpozo’s SS16 collection tackles the fragility of life and desire through a labyrinth of coloured walls, a red ball, and a broken statue. Whilst probably the most “fashion” on this list, director Pablo Maestres uses the youthful, quirky and romantic aesthetic of the Spanish’s brand clothes to create an artistic, highly symbolic piece.
4. Backstage at Gosha Rubchinskiy AW15
In this backstage look at Moscow-based designer, Gosha Rubchinskiy, and his AW 15 collection, Russian ideals of masculinity are disturbed through a combination of youth subculture aesthetics that incorporate the macho-style Russian Nazbol and the 80s consumerist Italian Paninaro. For instance, purple tracksuits are offset with faux fur coats. The director, Julian Klincewiez, says of Rubchinskiy: “I think he’s doing something very genuine, very un-pretentious, and very artistically methodical. There’s also a lot to read into each piece – what he’s referencing, What cultures he’s juxtaposing, what ideas he’s building off of, playing with, and expanding.”
5. Gareth Pugh AW15
Gareth Pugh, in his livestream of his AW15 collection, took the sinister aesthetic of Victorian Britain to juxtapose the sense of national pride in his designs in order to mark his return to Britain after spending 7 years in Paris. Dazed and Confused wrote: “Britannia was personified on the runway, a life-force rather than a tokenistic motif, with red as its powerful signifier. At first it took the form of a blood-soaked woman in a new short film by collaborator Ruth Hogben, projected inside the show space causing the Renaissance paintings inside the V&A to reflect its flames. Then it made its way onto the models’ faces, adorned with Saint George’s Cross make-up – the work of collaborator Alex Box. But these were more than tired references; this was the spirit of England. The chaos, the passion, the hope, the love, the hate, the history – all came together in Pugh’s vision.” The video also features the chants of Sunderland football fans to inject humour and pride into an otherwise other-worldly and dystopian depiction of Britain.