4 x 3.1

>> I've been ploughing through some fashion film projects that have inevitably cropped up in the last few years either because I missed it at the time or because I was too lazy at the time or it hadn't been Tweeted to death.  3.1 Phillip Lim's recent project with Asia's leading department store Lane Crawford has sort of gone under the radar probably because most of its proceedings happened on the other side of the world and because you don't normally associate Phillip Lim and fashion film together.  So here we have 4 x 3.1 where Lane Crawford and Phillip Lim asked four young creatives/artists to present the energy of their respective cities (New York, Hong Kong, Paris and Beijing) through their eyes with a custom made Phillip Lim outfit and a symbolic red door cropping up as the common demoninator. 

I have to admit, my daily fash film intake has mainly been overrun by Because Magazine because I'm a easy-breezy-airhead that likes 30 second clips where jackets, shoes and dresses spin around in sassy ways.  They have two (1,2) prime examples of Phillip Lim pieces moving in all the right ways.  Whilst Lim's design philosophy has always gone with an intuition for "confident, unidentifiable,coach bag sale, chic" which could sound a bit waffly but in essence, breaks down to "clothes that you wanna buy straight up and wear straight away."  How this transfers to the murky waters of fashion slash art films is answered here through deliberately moody soujourns through the four cities...

Elle Muliarchyk, an ex-model who is now a New York Times-published photographer took her subject through the buzz of Manhattan and then out into a Coney Island-esque beach for a random round of poker that lasts into the night...  

Rain Li, who has worked on cinematography for Christopher Doyle, Gus Van Sant and Jim Jarmusch, places her heroine in a heartbreak scenario as she travels through Beijing, reminding me why an UPDATED trip to a city I've not been to in years is much needed...

Photographer Victoria Tang, who has shot for the likes of Dior Homme and V Magazine deliberate juxtaposes the stereotypes of Hong Kong - the traditional/colonial/slow vs. the fast pace/neon/cosmopolitan with Siouxsie and the Banshees's Hong Kong Garden track completing the purposeful cliche.  

Multimedia artist Yi Zhou has simply animated an imaginary Paris landscape with the Phillip Lim white trenchcoat flying across and finally into a mail box along with the cream silk tunic and stomping black platforms. 

For a brand like 3.1 Phillip Lim, it seems the end result of this film project is that whilst there are four different heroines and situations, the selling point is still the "clothes that refine instead of define" which makes think that we've probably come to a point where fashion films have come to a point where we can start categorising them and creating sub-genres beneath what is I think a huge umbrella term...

Case in point, instead of looking out of my window, all pensive and misty-eyed post film watching, I immediately sought out A/W 10-11 pieces that are floating my boat,Nike Air Max ACG Mens, all of them involving some sort of animal print or another.  To buy the leopard berry wristlet or not seeing as I'm sticking to my BBerry?  Which Atomique 'mixed-media' trainer am I to pump for (hurrah - Mr Lim prefers to call his 'sneakers' trainers...)?  When will I STOP going into Browns Focus to stroke the giraffe print biker jacket?  All EQUALLY important questions to ponder...

(3.1 Phillip Lim items from La Garconne, Browns Fashion,replica soccer jerseys, Neiman Marcus, Aloha Rag and Net a Porter)