James Oakley

Director James Oakley’s new short for VPL by Victoria Bartlett—the brand that spearheaded the underwear-as-outerwear trend and quickly evolved into a fiercely chic ready-to-wear line—mixes sci-fi and horror into an eerie, mind-bending tale of alter-egos recalling 60s psychedelic classic Performance. Oakley paired mercurial brunette Eleanor Friedberger (one half of brother-sister indie duo The Fiery Furnaces) against the more maniacal blonde model Natasa Vojnovic, shooting the two flitting in and around a deserted old barn in upstate New York. The film's gothic elements are highlighted by the steel colors of the VPL fall/winter collection and by a frenzied, dreamlike soundtrack from The Fiery Furnaces. “I took a bunch of friends up to my house in the Catskills, and we had a weekend of debauchery and made a film,” deadpans Oakley, who directed Lena Olin and Rosamund Pike in his dark feature debut Devil You Know last year. He cites 70s Hammer House of Horror movies and a touch of Stalker-era Tarkovsky as inspirations for Her/She, while Bartlett attributes the alchemy onscreen to the actresses’ opposing personalities. “Natasa is high-energy—she’s really like a ball of fire,” the designer says. “Whereas Eleanor is very pensive about everything. She never has extreme highs or lows, so they just bounced off each other.”