French filmmaker Chris Marker’s 1962 movie La Jetée – ’the pier’ – provides the inspiration for this Melanie + Ramon-shot fashion film, captured in Paris alongside the photographic duo’s cover shoot for the September 2023 Style Issue of Wallpaper* (on international newsstands now).
Capturing the spirit of the Parisian street, the shoot was styled by Wallpaper* fashion director Jason Hughes, featuring looks that encapsulate the sense of drama and reduction which define the A/W 2023 collections.
As such, sleek tailoring – whether a broad-shouldered Gucci coat or the buttoned-up Prada jacket and long-length skirt which features on the issue’s cover – meets dramatic, longline silhouettes and towering pointed heels.
Melanie + Ramon‘s La Jetée-inspired fashion film
Jacket, £3,800; skirt, £1,210; shoes, £960, all by Prada
Lines from La Jetée feature over the short film, which sees Stockholm-born model Isa Gustafsson traverse Paris’ pedestrian landscape – whether brutalist concrete façades or the forecourt of a Monoprix supermarket.
One of ’the most influential, radical science-fiction films ever made’, according to distributor Criterion, Marker’s La Jetée is set post-World War III in a ruined Paris. Shot in black-and-white, its photomontage style – La Jetée is told through still images apart from one brief moving-image shot – tells the story of time-travel experiments, whereby the protagonist is sent through time to meet a woman from his memory, with whom he begins an affair.
With just a 28-minute runtime, La Jetée was nonetheless named as number 67 on Sight and Sound’s 2022 ‘Greatest Films of All Time’ poll, and is said to have influenced an array of artists and writers who followed – from American-Canadian science-fiction author William Gibson to David Bowie, as well as spawning a 2022 chamber opera by Seth Boustead and J Robert Lennon for the Chicago Fringe Opera.
Watch the film below
Photography and film: Melanie + Ramon. Fashion director: Jason Hughes. Model: Isa Gustafsson at Next Management. Casting: Ikki Casting. Hair: Michal Bielecki. Make-up: Marielle Loubet at Calliste Agency using Byredo. Fashion assistant: Kristina Bergfeldt. Digital operator: David Fitt at Sheriff Projects. Photography assistants: Enzo Tonati, Nicolas Darde. Retouching: Sheriff Projects. Producer: Anya Hassett.
Post-production: Everest Studio. Film editor: Julie at Everest Studio (@juliegft). Colour grader: Baptiste Vieillard. Thank you to Sylvain Obriot at Everest Studio. Texts from Chris Marker’s La Jetée.
See the full shoot in the September 2023 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, on sale now available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today
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