Fashion Insiders
Stephen Jones
While we’re a video production company based in London we are working increasingly with overseas clients, with an uptick in demand for production services from companies based in China.
NextShoot was invited by Hantang Culture - a leading media group in China which partners globally with a number of premium organisations including Opera National De Paris, Basel World and the Institut Francais - to produce a short portrait film for its Fashion Insiders strand.The strand profiles fashion’s leading brand founders, couturiers, icons, ateliers, houses, museums, and curators and academics. This film was to be about legendary London-based milliner Stephen Jones.
01
The Brief
The brief was simple enough. Working within the normal format for the series - which included a script recorded on location and beautiful, filmic shots captured on cine cameras with cine lenses - we were to encapsulate the work and attitude of British millinery’s favourite son, Stephen Jones.We had access to Stephen at an exhibition of his work at the Brighton Royal Pavilion and in his retail boutique/ design studio in a townhouse in Covent Garden, not far from where he owned his first boutique back in the 1980s. Since then his premises have remained a pilgrimage for famous clientele - from Boy George, and Princess Diana to Lady Gaga, Rihanna and Mick Jagger. His beguiling, whimsical, exquisitely formed hats have been adding an exclamation mark to fashion statements for forty years and his collaboration with designers - Vivienne Westwood, Thom Browne and Christian Dior - are part of the fabric of fashion history.
No pressure then.
02
Our Approach
The director, the talented Tomas Frigstad, had a clear vision for the film, with a sense of elegance at its core.Close up details of Stephen working with magical materials and wider shots that captured the elegance of his boutique from a bygone era were blended with the mad-hatter tea-party feel of his Brighton exhibition.
Stephen also gave a very personal voiceover, veering from the script to speak from the heart.
03
The Results
To do justice to a designer’s work that has graced the most celebrated magazines and runways, that has brought style to Ascot race-meetings, elegance to Buckingham Palace garden parties and wit to innumerable music videos is the challenge that all filmmakers would relish.Did we succeed? That’s not for us to say, but as an experience it was hard to top.
