Prada's new secondlifey fashion film/ad, "Trembled Blossoms"
Showstudio blog has an item up today about an interesting fashion advertising experiment:
[L]ast night the mighty PRADA unveiled 'Trembled Blossoms', a showstopping fashion film, at their 'SoHo Epicenter' store in New York. Directed by the performance artist James Luna and based on James Jean's Nouveau-esque wallpaper seen in the ad campaign, the film is an ambitious narrative fantasy depicting a cyber woman's journey through a magical, illustrated forest.Link (thanks, Susannah Breslin)
the latest
latest episodes
When did fauns get so big? Aren't they little and cute like Mister Tumnus? This one, which is very reminiscent of El Laberinto del Fauno, seems more like a satyr than Pan.
James Luna[sic] ≠ James Lima.
That's more like Fantastic Planet than Second Life, unless Second Life has vastly improved their graphics over the last 6 months.
faun? not Minotaur?
Zeus juice + nymph = Pan.
Bull juice + Pasiphaë = Minotaur.
On researching it, Pan is described as like a faun or satyr, but his Roman equivalent is Faunus. Fun fact: Hermes taught him how to masturbate.
PRADA's Labyrinth?
I was at the event in the Prada store, and in my personal opinion I think this was a seriously F'ed up animation.
In the part were the girl meets the Faun (this character is an obvious capitalization of Pan's Laberynth), there are what i think are sexual references mixed with materialism and depletion of natural resources..check it out, the fish transforms into a hand bag and the pond dries up.
progosk, thanks for that. I almost soiled myself thinking of Luna collaborating with Prada. In a bad way.
http://www.processrecess.com/#
Well hopefully that link still works by the time you click on it, but looks like the plan wans to make the minotaur or faun more petite than in the final piece. Also, thanks to Taogarcia's comment; I feel the same way but you put it best.
Although, I can't help be strangely attracted to the aesthetics. It's very Dali and I'm a big fan of Cocorosie, which surprises me why they would work with Prada in a film like this; they strike me to as a bit feminist.
ummm - yes - not ANYTHING like James LUNA's work (his performance art is VERY TOUGH and EDGY - a life changing experience if there ever was one)) the director is James LIMA NOT LUNA!!!!!
It's perverse. A child-like fairy does the catwalk wearing nothing but high-heels, in a world that cares only for clothes. She discovers a new world where it's OK to sacrifice a beautiful living thing (fish) for the sake of making a bag.
Yes, I know it's Prada, but there were so many other ways of making this work...
Nice artwork, rotten concept.
ugliest.handbag.ever.
I didn't read the kind of single-minded superficiality in this that Marco did, though my first thought when seeing the nymph in high heels was "Lo-LEE-tah!" I was more fascinated that such an advertising campaign for a major high-end fashion line would have been unheard of a generation ago.
And, with major respect to it's creators, a critical but hopefully fair review of the work here:
Prada's Trembled Blossoms fails to fully bloom
http://window.org.nz/2008/02/pradas-trembled-blossoms-fails-to-fully.html
Ok, this is just weird to me. This piece is not well made. It has a pedigree or two behind it, but that doesn't seem to have been worth much visually or even conceptually.
What rankles me is that I think this kind of collaboration is wonderful - but these guys are fucking it up. The fashion world is finally warming up to the world of tech and, more importantly, Motion Graphics. It's something that I've thought needed to happen for a long time, that informs and advances both fields. And many companies have been doing it successfully for years. BMW, Lexus, Nike, Absolut, Diesel, and now Prada are all big name luxury brands that are sponsoring and commissioning artists and furthering the field - more or less altruistically....
But this piece is b-a-d bad! Not only is it just a long format ad for handbags and shoes, but it's not even well made. It looks like pre-viz, from like 8 years ago - and not even in an ironic, bad-is-good, retro kind of way. And, as several people have mentioned already, it's message is horrific.
I... I guess I just don't want crap to kill off this fledgling movement before it has a chance to catch on.
Given Prada's euro origins, what we think in NA as bad is more like macabre/decadent/fairy tale good. (while there are moments of beauty, overall the trembling blossoms stink of sweet perfume, liking rotting lily petals) But this marketing effort is not necessarily a failure. Fashion houses are branding themselves to future high-end consumers - vacuous 12yr olds who will grow-up to be vacuous 20yr olds. We think that tweens' disposable income is targeted only by mass-marketers of walmart trash, but rich kids have to be marketed to as well.
James Luna Rules!!! James Lima - not so much.