I am an avid supporter of the fashion film. If I were at a soirée with fashion I’d make like Jane Austen’s Emma and match-make that bitch up with my old pal film in a flash. Luckily the artistic world seems to need no nudges when it comes to the marriage of clothes and moving images. It is becoming increasingly common for brands to release a film alongside each new collection; perhaps emphasising a demand for labels to demonstrate their wearability, or simply an overdue acknowledgement of the importance of movement in clothing design.

Either way, when two visually motivated fields combine, you just know it’s going to be ocularly opulent. What the perfectly baked crème brûlée is to your taste buds, the fashion film is to your eyes. Or at least that’s true for me.

Which leads us to Hyères Fashion festival, a parallel fashion and photography competition that provided the ideal aesthetic melting pot for director Philippe Prouff and Designer Tsolmandakh ‘Tsolo’ Munkhuu to meet. Tsolo had just won the public prize and Prouff was no more resistant to her collection’s charms than the public were. With the theme of ‘Black Magic’ the Mongolian designer had created a striking array of clothes akin to architecture in their intricate structures, which indeed seemed to envelope the models and turn them into something eerily ethereal yet strong. Tsolo draws from a diverse pool of inspiration and combines embroidery, painting and a bold use of volume in her creations that even in a still image can’t help but evoke a sense of movement with their juxtaposed elements. The pieces seem somehow to be solid one moment, and fluid the next.

Philippe Prouff, who upon seeing the collection imagined an animal that could take on a human form, seized upon this idea of transformation. Borrowing from Buddhist philosophy (incidentally not far from Tsolo’s own Mongolian origins), the storyline for the ‘Tsolo’ film was set. In a fairytale universe (think idyllic forest with just a lingering sense of sinister), an encounter between a beautiful doe and a hunter caught off-guard takes place. It’s a simple yet engaging three minutes and model Lia Cartreux perfectly portrays the playful innocence and fragility of the doe, all the while looking utterly entrancing in Munkhuu’s sculptural creations. Produced by Walter Films, a Parisian company counting many major fashion players as partners, ‘Tsolo’ is well worth a biscuit-break perusal if only to inject a little couture caper into your weekday routine. The designer herself continues to blend traditional and urban elements to bewitching effect in her latest collection showcased here.

 The full film can be viewed here or at Walter Films

Tsolo‘s winning collection:

Thanks to TSOLO and Marion Leflour