A HYPNOTIC SYMMETRY
For autumn/winter 2022, ANEST COLLECTIVE drew on the visionary insight of director Stephen Kidd and the Paris-based art direction agency Ohlman Consorti to produce a film and stills campaign around the theme of ‘Fragmentation’. It follows the linear journeys of two individuals as they transit through their daily routines. Intercut with that black-and-white narrative is full-colour abstract imagery, suggesting the emotional inner life we all experience.
The two-minutes film was shot on location at the Cité des Sciences et de L’Industrie (CSI) in Paris, the biggest science museum in Europe. In a first for ANEST COLLECTIVE, campaign stills will be drawn from film footage. The monochrome 1980s architecture of the CSI becomes a metropolitan system through which two protagonists stride, in endless transit.
“The black and white sequences showing the outer, physical world: the way we go from home to work, to lunch, back home again,” says Pierre Consorti, partner at Ohlman Consorti, “Interspersed with that is footage that shows life as seen from different angles.”
The former is accurate, complete and rational, while the latter is perceptual, romantic and enjoyable.
The two protagonists are shuttling endlessly in this monochromatic building that symbolizes the urban system. The black-and-white narrative is orderly and mechanical, and at the moment it comes to an abrupt end, the abstract images of disorder and illusion rise from each other.
“The autumn/winter collection is a reflection of our shared emotional state following a generation-defining health emergency,’ says ANEST COLLECTIVE’S contributing creative director Brendan Mullane, “After everything, it’s a chance to ask: ‘How are we rebuilding ourselves?’” The idea of ‘Fragmentation’ is expressed through precise tailoring that is deconstructed and stripped back, before being re-assembled into something entirely new. “Fragile, inner workings are revealed, and the film captures this feeling,” says Mullane.
Although we live in reality, we also live in our own minds. They go their own way, parallel to each other, like a monologue that people often sink into, and this abstract monologue meets again in daily life. Stephen Kidd explained: "These are like ANEST COLLECTIVE clothes, they express a concrete sense of architecture, but also intangible inspiration."
Reality and imagination collide and dissolve here, and the next second, it is brand-new and reshaped.
