DEADLETTER Wear Their Emotions - And Celine Homme
The continuum connecting music to fashion is as implicitly understood as a traditional Sunday roast. What floats beneath the known are mystical intersections between spontaneous sound, instrumentation and the urgency which expression necessitates. Each magic level — as above, so below — enhances the performance realm. This historic stage firmly places men’s fashion alongside music. It sat Ossie Clark next to Mick Jagger; Alexander McQueen beside David Bowie; and today, provides seats at the table to engage Hedi Slimane (the Artistic, Creative and Image Director of Celine) and the British guitar rock band DEADLETTER.
It could successfully be argued that Hedi Slimane has art directed the 21st century performance realm through an unending enthusiasm with its attitudes. Slimane harnesses the codified language of the performance realm with visceral photography and fashion design. His work is that of an artist working through the sensitivity of a fan. Photography, much like his clothes, builds off the palimpsests of music and fashion semiotics: male beauty, independent energy from youthful unrest, sharp gestures, precision, set design, dedication to a scene. These qualities formulate the liturgy of Hedi Slimane reportage that stitches a lyrical line consciously articulated into his clothes. His photographic lens documents rock musicians (Keith Richards, Miles Kane, Pete Doherty) and cultural shapeshifters (Gore Vidal, Gus Van Sant, Kate Moss) in equal measurements of love and respect. Focus captures quick, elusive movements from music transmitted through the gaze of that ephemeral performance realm. The focus does not speak fashion directly, yet Slimane’s work indelibly transforms rock iconoclasts into intensely fashionable iconography.
DEADLETTER, in shamanic lockstep with stylist Johnny Bloom, stretches the role of reportage photography to encompass moving images with their new music video, ‘Mere Mortal.’ It represents DEADLETTER’s personal approach to raw, intimate performance that engages the impulse to live your life loudly, even if the street is your own historic stage. Zac Lawrence, Alfie Husband, Poppy Richler, George Ullyott, Sam Jones and Will King assemble impressions of a collective consciousness in ‘Mere Mortal,’ directed by Laurence Hills, to locate the groove inside grieving together as real friend groups do. Togetherness merges a somber black-and-white tonality (Hedi Slimane’s preferred photographic palette) for a centralised vision — the eternal obsession for something else. It is a funeral story sublimated by a highly stylised performance story. Enter the intensely fashionable result called ‘Mere Mortal.’
DEADLETTER, pre-DEADLETTER, met Hedi Slimane as an up and coming, three-piece band (Zac, Alfie and Geroge) he photographed. Slimane’s gut unselfishness for nascent bands wrapped itself around DEADLETTER. They played his afterparty for the Celine Homme S/S 23 ‘Dysfunctional Bauhaus’ collection. It is unsurprising then, that DEADLETTER and Johnny Bloom inject that resonance with Celine Homme to fashion 'Mere Mortal.' His clothes signify that ongoing love story to musicians locked inside the performance realm.
Synergy between style and sincerity is paramount. DEADLETTER operates using the impulse of style that is neither messy nor incoherent. Desire is the motivating factor. Celine Homme therefore is a natural complement. Celine Homme was founded on one designer’s natural impulse to augment Celine, itself a heightened notion of contemporary practicality. DEADLETTER project effortlessness into the intentional clothes-ness in ‘Mere Mortal.’ Poppy Richler cleverly subverts Celine’s bourgeois ubiquity by wearing a crocheted silk dress from ‘Tomboy’ S/S 24. Dragging luxury womenswear into boys' noise on rainy rooftops, smoking in low brow cafes, is hardly the provenance of smart, chic separates, but in actuality it is. Lavalliere shirts revert to pussy bow nomenclature again, thanks to Poppy. DEADLETTER propels jacno heels, devoré shirts and Zac’s contrast satin lapels into Hedi Slimane’s Left Bank delusional daydream. The result decentralises mourning as a linear practise to engage DEADLETTER’s daily communion penning hardscrabble love songs to the human lives we live.
Hedi Slimane and DEADLETTER embrace purity surrounding primal intentions. Lyrics become stories set to music. These music stories take shape in the performance world that depicts an experience of impulses, intimately captured to observe the scene. Everything happens in tandem to feed the music/fashion continuum. DEADLETTER’s evanescent, intensely fashionable film intently examines permanence in detail. This visual conversation around grief provides a mirror to men to inspire our boys to be more open. DEADLETTER stridently support mental health charities in a daily existence that seems to mollify the importance of any ‘Mere Mortal’ — how to manage mental health after losing someone you love?
‘In fact, punk rock means EXEMPLARY MANNERS TO YOUR FELLOW HUMAN BEING.’
— Joe Strummer, September 1999
DEADLETTER supports CALM and James Place. They would appreciate it if you did as well.
Notes from the creative team:
Molly Hackney brought the creative heads of department together and production designed the film.
Masha Thorpe produced the film.
Sam Finney was cinematographer.