The team at Rag & Bone has chosen to showcase their latest collection with a music video, which they premiered last night at the Metrograph theater in Manhattan. They’re calling it a short film, but given that there is no plot or dialogue — rather, a six-and-a-half minute song by Radiohead’s Thom York — “music video” seems like a more apt description.
The video, titled “Why Can’t We Get Along” was codirected and choreographed by former New York City Ballet principal Benjamin Millepied (husband of Natalie Portman), and filmed in a Brooklyn warehouse with actors Kate Mara and Ansel Elgort leading a group of dancers wearing the label’s spring-summer 2018 collection, which is currently available in stores.
“Not doing shows anymore and having pulled out of fashion week [means] we’re just focusing on creating awesome content that represents our philosophy as a brand,” designer Marcus Wainwright told WWD. “It organically shifted from an idea to do a film into an idea to do it on perspectives and movement.
“It’s a breaking down in some ways of the system we’ve all been working in for a long time,” he added. “We have to start thinking about the customer. It’s not about the press anymore; it’s really about the customer [who has] so much transparency these days. You’ve got to think about what will resonate with them and do they care that [fashion week] is in September [or February]? Probably not.”
It is commendable that Rag & Bone is looking for new and compelling ways to engage their customers, but it would have been nice if they had tried something a little less conventional. After all, atmospheric fashion videos like this one are almost as ubiquitous as runway shows at this point, but unlike with a runway show, it’s pretty difficult to really get a good look at the clothes in this format. Or, at least, the clothes seem to be so besides the point, that it’s difficult to focus on them. That’s unfortunate, because some of them look like they could be pretty cool.
