We open on an upside down vision of two women, their bodies facing the camera but gazing in opposite directions. They wear clothes whose shapes appeal to us for attention: androgynous tailoring, sheet-like draping, ruched slits and folds in surprising places.
The women stand in a studio, we assume: it seems sunny in this nebulous space—as if off in the room are giant windows; perhaps the space is an industrial loft, perhaps it is high noon and the harsh light of winter is slanting in. Other than the importance of light, the space itself is irrelevant, part of the dreamscape to which these two tastemakers belong.
Like a sort of limbo, this video is a midpoint between reality and illusion: an interstitial space where innovation resides. The ensembles they wear look like piano keys: two notes, tonally contrasting yet complimentary.
There is something nonsensical in the narrative of this filmic moment, which well matches the surrealist desires of the models, whose playful rejection of meaning reminds us of the Czech film directed by Věra Chytilová, Daisies: a beacon of anarchy and feminism from 1966. The story is of two women, linked together by their desires for pleasure, sensation, and directionless action.
Stock footage of plants, industry, pleasure, and people makes up the meaty middle of this fashion film just as stock footage from WWII—smoke plumes and airplanes strafing land, water—opens the film Daisies. Even the score that underlines the opening scene of Daisies—with its urgent percussive beat—is echoed in the music playing in the space where our two fashionable, contemporary “Marie’s” reside.
