It all started with a gay leather fetish party. Back in November, I met New York-based director and photographer Christelle de Castro when we shared a late-night ride in a friend's van to an S&M party in Brooklyn. On the way, we swapped stories about our favorite NYC parties, with Seva Granik and Ladyfag's SHADE as a top contender. Suddenly, de Castro had an epiphany: why not shoot a video in the gargantuan, industrial-sized warehouse where SHADE usually goes down? Several months later, that video has arrived courtesy of Nicopanda's S/S16 campaign, and it's beyond dope. In line with the collection's club kid aesthetics—the ads hilariously include a model holding poppers in his mouth, and designer Nicola Formichetti has made no secret of his love for nightlife—de Castro's video follows two warring clans of ballerinas and punks voguing in an improvised battle starring Jonte' Moaning, Mela Murder, Kaner Flex, Richard Kennedy, Malik Winslow and Kaori Kstar Narita.In order to reflect the new collection's hard punk elements and softer, romantic flourishes, NYC producers Michael Magnan and JX Cannon collaborated on a soundtrack that juxtaposes brittle drums and harsh static with warmer synth tones and cooing vocals. "Christelle approached me about doing original music for the video around the same time [JX Cannon] and I had made plans to work on something together… it sort of all happened in a day," Magnan tells THUMP. "We pulled a bunch of old sci-fi effects from a radio sfx comp to make all the screaming and static effects," JX Cannon adds. "We wanted to make something pussy and noisy at the same time."Watch the video above and read more about the project on SHOWstudio's websiteFollow Michelle Lhooq on Twitter
Advertisement