‘A Shaded View On Fashion Film’ festival founder Diane Pernet: "fashion is best presented in motion"
Established in 2008, A Shaded View on Fashion Film selects the hottest talent from the world of fashion, style and beauty film.
This year’s jury president Michele Lamy leads a panel of international style experts, including Renault’s chief designer Laurens Van den Acker and Valerie Steele, curator of the FIT Museum in New York City.
With fashion film a growing phenomenon, we asked founder Diane Pernet to explain more:
Relaxnews: The ‘Fashion Film’ genre seems to encompass a lot of different ideas – how do you define it?
Diane Pernet: To begin with, I think the ‘fashion film’ was born out of a real need to breathe life into the old static medium and set fashion in motion through the magic of cinema. What ASVOFF does is to give people in both industries — and talented outsiders too — a platform to let this genre flourish. Hopefully, by rewarding excellence in the field, it also keeps pushing them to push the boundaries forward too.
I am very focused on building this festival. I want to be able to offer a strong platform for designers, artists and filmmakers to exchange ideas; to have some spontaneous dialogue and experiment on projects together. In particular, I want to be able to provide a place where ‘the establishment’ and the ‘young emerging talent’ in fashion, film and art can meet and hopefully turn at least a few sublime dreams into reality. Who wouldn’t want to be a matchmaker between fascinating, talented people who eventually create “wow projects” together?
R: How do you make your selection for the festival? Do you pick films for a specific audience, or are you just pleasing yourself?
DP: Of course the films have to please me. It may seem obvious but there is a very compelling reason for the continued popularity of the ‘fashion film’. If you think about it, fashion is best presented when it is in motion. The medium of film and video brings the consumer much closer to important characteristics of clothes that can’t be seen in photography. ‘Fashion film’ is not as good as trying clothes on in person or watching a fashion show but it is the next best thing. From ‘fashion film’, you can try to sense the tactile quality of clothes and see how they move when you walk — not to mention other elusive qualities that may only be perceptible in the subconscious but which are important when people decide what to buy.”
ASVOFF takes place October 11 to 13 in Paris.
