River Island
2015 · Spain
Directed by Dvein
Genres: experimental, fantasy
A CGI fashion film inspired by the prints of Jean-Pierre Braganza's capsule collection for River Island, taking the viewer on a journey through an imagined world to discover the geography of its landscapes and the strange creatures that inhabit them.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A fashion film that refuses to be a fashion film — Dvein weaponizes a capsule collection's patterns into an alien ecosystem, treating haute couture as a barely-concealed excuse for world-building psychedelia that would make most commissioners weep. This is exactly the kind of subversive commission-work-as-trojan-horse that makes the establishment uncomfortable.
Dvein's lineage in the commercial avant-garde becomes fully legible here: the rigid geometry of Braganza's prints transformed into a rigorously composed CGI landscape that echoes the formal experiments of 90s digital abstraction while remaining entirely its own thing. Each creature is a considered formal gesture, not a flourish.
The decision to let the clothing patterns *generate* the entire visual logic rather than showcase it — allowing the geometry to dictate creature morphology and environmental color — is the kind of conceptual constraint that forces technical virtuosity to serve something beyond spectacle.
Festivals
- Berlin Fashion Film Festival 2015, Best VFX, Best Original Music, Best Narrative/Idea