Phoebe English x Marie Kristiansen: Breathing life into a collection

I wrote about Phoebe English almost 2 years ago and if anything, I like her style even more, especially the videos for her collections. Her collaboration with director Marie Kristiansen resulted in hauntingly beautiful footages that really isn’t just about the garments but rather the performance of living them.

The designer explains, “The A/W 2013 film is designed around the main themes I was working with for the collection – x-rays, layers of transparent surfaces and functional detailing. The eye masks were derived from a desire to hide and protect the models whilst they were being displayed in a show environment; this was reinterpreted in the film with the protagonist being displayed on a plinth.”

The S/S 2013 video is similarly brilliant with the designer and director exploring various techniques of filming to convey the concept of the collection. English said, “The collection played on the themes of doubles and pairs, so we did some parts where the garments jumped and interchanged into different colourways. We also played around with light and slow motion movement to show the glass beads in the collection. We worked with light and shade as the collection is mainly monotone, looking at photography by Arthur Tress. When we have worked on films previously we have often explored different voyeuristic perspectives, so this time we took the theme a bit further and Marie shot alot of the detail through binoculars.”

These videos breathe life into English’s collection and they are way more captivating than runway shows.

x Sybil