From The Straits Times    |
Crane Wife fashion film THUMBNAIL

Recently there’s been a number of interesting pieces of film art created by both fashion designers – like Karl Lagerfeld – for their own labels, and top-notch directors for fashion labels, most famously Zoe Cassavetes for Miu Miu and Tom Ford for, well, Tom Ford.

Now Singapore fashion designer Max Tan has his own short fashion film, entitled Crane Wife, featuring the Autumn Winter 2012/13 collection of his eponymous label.

Crane Wife fashion film
A still from the fashion film Crane Wife

Crane Wife was created by an artistic collaboration of some of Singapore’s better known fashion insiders – stylist from Fashionide, Stanley Lui, Actually store, Nana and Bird and FrüFrü & Tigerlily – and a film team from strangexperiments.

strangexperiments is a young duo of Singaporean multi-media artists who work with motion and still images. The fashion film Crane Wife was directed by Allysa Sing, with cinematographer Benjamin Ziggy, set design by Wan Adzlynn Fizra and a score by Benedict Lee.

Model Rose Gegee wore Max.Tan Autumn Winter 2012/13 with shoes from Actually, accessories from Nana and Bird and bags from FrüFrü & Tigerlily in the film that was styled by Stanley Lui.

The film was inspired by “The Crane Wife”, a Japanese folktale where a poor man cares for an injured crane who turns into a woman who he falls in love with and marries; to make money she starts weaving amazing cloth that’s softer than silk but insists he never watches her work.

When the clothes sell and make more and more money, the man become more and more greedy, pushing his wife to work harder. He eventually decides to peek into her workroom to discover the origin of this wonderous fabric; it’s a crane weaving the cloth from her feathers. Spotting the man, the Crane Wife flies away and never returns.

In Crane Wife, the melancholy tone of the old story is portrayed via the colours; the mythic quality, an “old fashioned” feel, comes from the stacato movements of the model.

“Fashion film is a genre that lies between art and commerce, which has been gaining currency in the industry,” says cinematographer Benjamin Lee. “But within our local scene, there is still a vacuum in regards to fashion film. This is why we decided to embark on a fashion film project of our own, hoping to generate interest in making fashion films in Singapore.”

The film has also been submitted to the Vimeo Festival in the fashion category. The winners are decided by selected industry judges, including top fashion photographer Nick Knight, who was also one of the pioneers of the fashion film genre.

Fingers crossed this Singapore fashion film makes the grade.

WATCH CRANE WIFE BELOW:

Crane Wife from strangexperiments on Vimeo.