Dress: Yojiro Kake. Crown: Alessandro Gaggio. Model: Lavinia Feliziani
Teen years are a time of self-discovery, for better or for worse. The sense of overwhelming emotional slides and an angst inherent in our relationship with our own bodies during adolescence remains a consistent prompt in modern culture and artistic output, from Fumi Nagasaka’s photographs of New York teens to classic cinematic offerings such as The Virgin Suicides.
Florence-based art director Rocco Gurrieri has collaborated with photographer Irene Montini to explore such themes of teenage angst for his short fashion film and editorial entitled “La Crema”, which depicts a wildly saturated, chaotic glam-pop world of flamboyance and whimsy.
“Irene and I are like children, we love fairy tales,” Gurrieri tells SLEEK of the inspiration for the fantastical shoot. “We built this psychedelic-glam story from an attentive research of new trends, colours, scenography. Each of our works is proposed as a transversal journey between an enchanted world, cinema and photography.”
“La Crema” tells the story of a group of misfit and “monstrous adolescents governed by love, desire, horror and beauty”, posing insolent and rhetorical questions as they stand awkwardly at a theatrically staged party, as if part of a visual imagining of how it feels to be out of place. The colourful setting and flamboyant stylings play with this idea of inner turmoil, evoking something of a dreamlike sensory overload that is on the tipping point of becoming a nightmare.
“We reflected on the concept of owning a body when we’re teenagers,” says Gurrieri. “We own a body, we do not choose it. Thus, the characters of “La Crema” are suffocated shapes, searching for an identity in a complex world that, just like ours, judges and enforces precise rules.”
Outfit: Benedetta Giannessi. Model: Sebastiano Gericke
A palette of garishly clashing colours and over-sized props match the contrasting textures of prickly strands of glitter, tumbling layers of fine netting, soft satin folds, and even hair that is woven into a mini-dress design. The looks, which were created in collaboration with many fashion and accessory designers such as Alessandro Gaggio, ANNA KIKI, Sander Bos, Yojiro Kake, Pierpaolo Grasso, Fabio Bigondi, Matteo Brucciani, Benedetta Giannessi, and Giada Laterza, are styled with the purpose of challenging the viewer. For Gurrieri, the concepts of ‘beautiful’ and ‘ugly’ are as temperamental as the subjects of this images. “The crooked element becomes perfect when welcomed, only then does it become beauty.”
See more from the photo story below:
Credits:
Art direction: Rocco Gurrieri and Irene Montini
Photography: Irene Montini
Stylist: Yasmine Saliba
Makeup: Yasmine Saliba and Alice Imbriani
Production design: Matteo Pucci
Assistant production design: Josephine D’angeac
Set assistants: Arianna Severi and Rocco Gurrieri
Models: Otavio Schroeder, Lavinia Feliziani, Alberto Severi, Giulio Noccesi, Riccardo Chimenti, Yasmine Saliba, Mabel Donado, Filippo di Paolo, Beatrice Savini, Sebastiano Gericke, Eva Bagnoli and Martino Pinzauti.