The muse is the House itself

Sprezzatura is a hard thing to photograph and a harder thing to film. It is the Italian art of looking effortless while nothing about it is: the studied carelessness of a coat left open, a hand half in a pocket. A still frame can suggest it. A fashion film has to keep it alive across a minute, in movement, without letting it tip into performance.

That was the brief for the Gucci special editorial in MOJEH, where I worked as video director alongside the photography team on set.

The collection

As MOJEH put it, Gucci “traverses time with the autumn/winter collection, staging a sartorial throwback that honours decades of savoir-faire” — beginning with the silhouettes of the 1960s, when the Maison showed its first ready-to-wear collection, and running through to the present. The pieces carry the House codes forward: a chenille jumpsuit under all-over GG crystals, the Horsebit returning on a belt buckle and again on a Softbit bag, stirrup detailing worked into metal chokers. Retro hues throughout — purple sablé, green bouclé tweed, patent mules in light grey.

Directing the film

Working as a fashion film director on an editorial set is a question of rhythm rather than of setups. The stills team is chasing the single decisive frame; the film has to find the movement between those frames — the walk in, the turn, the fabric catching up with the body a beat late. On this shoot the two ran in parallel, on the same light, in the same hours.

On set