BRITT LLOYD’S KIND OF BLUE
Captures The Magic of Youth and Masculinity
Fashion film Kind of Blue from Britt Lloyd and Nick Knight’s SHOWstudio offers a stunning narrative. It’s a portrait that juxtaposes crashing waves and galloping horses with the London skyline and the freedom of male adolescence. Lloyd garnered inspiration from Kiko Kostadinov, Ludovic de Saint Sernin and Saul Nash’s Spring / Summer 20 menswear collections.
“I like shooting men because I think the male form is very beautiful, it’s the most visually pleasing thing for me – it’s not a sexual thing, it’s the ability and power. I like filming dancers, musicians, boxers, athletes – people that really push the human body,” Lloyd told SHOWstudio. “Often there is this viewpoint that women are soft and delicate, and men have to be aggressive and non-emotional. And often the music to breakdancing videos is aggressive, sporadic and uneasy, yet what they’re doing is extremely beautiful. Breakdancers have every right to be captured dancing to piano music, because it’s just as beautiful as a ballet dancer doing a pirouette.”
A symphony plays Debussy’s freeing melody, “Suite bergamasque,” from Claire de Lune over the hi-def images. Everything is draped in blue in the urban scenes, while the nature photos are black and white. Intermixed are beautiful vignettes of toned men dancing.
“I was reading a Man Ray autobiography, and he wrote about the first film he made in Paris in the 1930s, but, at the time, they couldn’t capture audio,” Lloyd said of the music. “So they would play the film and the music accompaniment would come from a single pianist who would play his immediate reaction to the film. For Kind of Blue, I felt it would be enough to watch something beautiful and have some beautiful music in the background, and it didn’t need to marry any more than that.”
The short film is a captivating way to showcase these collections. The natural and manufactured aspects of masculinity present an interesting dichotomy. Though they are opposites at heart, we see how both feed into manhood. It shows that neither experience is superior. The film evokes a sense of freedom and rugged individualism. It feels whimsical and flowing but also robust and headstrong. It’s a gorgeous short film that PROVOKR hopes you enjoy.
