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May 16, 2013

Deerhunter x Proenza Schouler: Monomania

Band Members Become the Unlikely Faces of the Ever-Current New York Womenswear Line

Indie rocker androgyny finds a kindred spirit in women's ready-to-wear courtesy of Proenza Schouler in this series of photographs featuring Deerhunter, accompanied by an eponymous track taken from the recently released album Monomania. The unlikely collaboration was born from mutual admiration between Bradford Cox, the provocative lead singer of the psychedelic noise-rock band, and the New York fashion label’s Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez. “Bradford had all these themes and ideas he was playing with during the recording of the album. He was obsessed with primitive and African art, fur and animal prints,” explains photographer Robert Semmer, who is working with the Atlanta-born band on a bigger visual project, including a film and music video around the release of this latest album. “Bradford and the drummer Moses were already huge fans of Proenza Schouler and when they saw the Autumn/Winter 2013 show they freaked out because it was exactly the same vibe that they were obsessing over.” NOWNESS caught up with the designers to discover more about this brand new alliance.

What makes Deerhunter the perfect Proenza muse?
Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez: Bradford is fiercely driven to explore his craft and is possessed by it, something we find incredibly intoxicating and inspiring. It makes us want to push harder, to think bigger.

Were you surprised to hear that the band are big fans of Proenza Schouler A/W13?
JM and LH: It was definitely unexpected and funny since it’s a women’s fashion brand.

How did your collaboration come about?
JM and LH: We went to a performance they gave at MoMA PS1 in Queens a few weeks before our fall runway show. Afterwards we went backstage to meet Bradford; he mentioned that he and the band were fans of Proenza Schouler and that it might be interesting to work on something together. We invited them to the show in February and the next day they called us up and asked us to dress them for their album cover shoot.

Is it important to connect with interesting bands?
JM and LH: We’ve been listening to both Deerhunter and Atlas Sound [Cox’s solo project] on repeat. Music is really important to us—it formulates ideas when we’re drawing and working in the studio. We’re constantly looking for new music online and going off on tangents searching for things.

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Acne Paper x Roe Ethridge

Karlie Kloss Mixes Business and Pleasure in a Monochrome Manhattan

Photographer Roe Ethridge teams up with Missouri-born model Karlie Kloss to merge the charm of Breakfast at Tiffany’s with the attitude of Working Girl in this Acne Paper preview. Shooting in vintage black and white, Ethridge channels modernist greats such as Cecil Beaton and Helmut Newton to put a contemporary, downtown spin on couture and cocktails. Represented by Gagosian Gallery and having exhibited at New York's Museum of Modern Art, Ethridge is known for his ability to upset conventional archetypes. Here, he blurs disciplinary boundaries by stepping out of his fine art background and into the world of fashion. Against the photographer's classic editorial backdrop, precise and imaginative styling by Marie Chaix transforms otherwise hard-shell looks from the likes of Lanvin, Jil Sander and Manolo Blahnik, with the results conveying an ageless sense of urban style. "Each theme has to have a timeless quality,” explains Acne Editor-in-Chief Thomas Persson of choosing to devote the latest issue of the bi-annual to New York City. “We roam through history while creating work that is up-to-the-minute.”

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Spotlight

Greg Kessler: Pre-Catwalk

The Backstage Fashion Photographer Teams Up With Illustrator Somsack Sikhounmuong

Amid moments of chaos and anticipation, photographer Greg Kessler and illustrator Somsack Sikhounmuong document the hidden electricity that surrounds behind-the-scenes imagery. Raw, unhindered and almost surrealist, the shots were originally captured during the Fall 2012 shows before being hand-illustrated to offer a new take on the traditional backstage photograph. “There is a certain beauty in that tiny moment where everything just stops and the only thing you can hear is the camera shutter,” says the New York-based Kessler, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Numero, and Teen Vogue. This season, intrigued by the fantastical and voyeuristic elements he encountered on the runways of New York, Milan and Paris, Kessler asked Sikhounmuong to add his playful illustrations to the original images. “The final collages reveal something you cannot see in the air backstage but something you can feel: the chaos, the drama and the emotion,” adds Kessler. Rejecting digital manipulation, Sikhounmuong took a back-to-basics approach and worked solely by hand, cutting and pasting directly on to the photographs, then applying paint and ink on to acetate over the top. “Rather than erasing reality, the collages heighten the backstage experience using a hyper visual language,” explains the illustrator.

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