Today we present you the film made for the 2021’s Karl Lagerfeld LVMH prize winner Lukhanyo Mdingi, directed by filmmaker Adriaan Louw, starring the South African artist Desire Marea titled Desire, with the premise of how music, film and fashion can create an honest story through the spirit of collaboration.
In the film, we see a retro aesthetic with granulated images that portray an honest portrait of our origins and the importance their roots and heritage has for both the designer and the musician. With vibrant cultural motifs on his collections, he works through felting: a process he describes as an intimate and hands-on approach to textile development. Desire expands on young men's contradictions, it is a space that furthers the gaze of truth and the self. It explores our essence, our psyche, our sexuality.
If there is one thing this designer is clear about, both through the fashion film and his usual aesthetic, it is that life is for feeling it as a community. From Desire’s perspective, it commands to expand on the simplicity of the sensorial aspects of the physical body. Therefore, the platform aims to amplify passion, to create a nexus between the spiritual and earthy notions of our existence in order to excel and enlighten our creativity. To establish artistic relationships that fulfil our existence. A space to visit a portal such as water.
Mdingi says the Coutts collection, seen in the fashion film, embodies the spirit of Nicholas Coutts — an important Cape Town designer that passed away in July 2020 and pays homage to his notion of essence. He recalls: “we all want to be seen and to be heard for our truest selves.” The aim is to be present. To grow most organically and naturally possible. To be here, now, with them.
If there is one thing this designer is clear about, both through the fashion film and his usual aesthetic, it is that life is for feeling it as a community. From Desire’s perspective, it commands to expand on the simplicity of the sensorial aspects of the physical body. Therefore, the platform aims to amplify passion, to create a nexus between the spiritual and earthy notions of our existence in order to excel and enlighten our creativity. To establish artistic relationships that fulfil our existence. A space to visit a portal such as water.
Mdingi says the Coutts collection, seen in the fashion film, embodies the spirit of Nicholas Coutts — an important Cape Town designer that passed away in July 2020 and pays homage to his notion of essence. He recalls: “we all want to be seen and to be heard for our truest selves.” The aim is to be present. To grow most organically and naturally possible. To be here, now, with them.
