You never know what to expect from Cav Empt; but whatever the Japanese label does, you can expect it to look good. That’s because the brand is lucky enough to orbit some of the most creative and influential talent across music and film: D Double E, Joy Orbison, Will Bankhead, Actress, Bafic, as well as the brand’s long time collaborator Ben Drury. To celebrate the new season’s drop, Cav Empt’s Toby Feltwell enlisted London-based director Cieron Magat to collaborate with on a spring/summer 17 film, premiering exclusively below. “We’ve worked with Cieron a couple of times on photo shoots and it’s always come out really well. There’s a particular charm to what he does that you don’t see anywhere else,” explains Toby.
The film’s music is its focal point. The track (“Mother Funk,” by Berlin-based producer EMG) plays in the background as the models party in a tongue-in-cheek rave setting. We asked Toby a few questions about pushing Cav Empt outside of its comfort zone and what we can expect from the new collection.
Tell us about the thinking for the film.
We’d heard the track “Mother Funk” a while ago and thought we’d like to use it for the film. We discussed a few ideas, but we liked this idea of a staged, fake rave. We think it’s a lot less serious than the last couple of videos we’ve done, which is a nice change.
The film harks back to heyday of rave culture. Is this what the collection was based around?
Not at all. The film is not intended to be ironic at all, but it is in a way. Cieron’s great at capturing young people being themselves — and that’s very genuine. We wouldn’t want to attempt a false sense of authenticity — to try to pretend somehow that our clothes really belong in historical rave culture. That would be total bullshit, and that claim to authenticity is what marketing generally tries to do and it’s boring and offensive. So, instead of that, we wanted to make something genuine, but inauthentic. The video probably shows the clothes more directly than anything we’ve done for a few years. It’s not so easy for us to be so direct. We’re not interested in repeating ourselves, though.
It was interesting to see girls in the mix this time around. Was this a conscious decision?
It fits into the scenario… We’re very happy with how the clothes look too, but we’re honestly not thinking about targeting a whole new group of potential consumers!
In your opinion, what is a standout piece for spring/summer 17?
Of course, we like all of it. But, we haven’t seen a piece of knitwear with a picture of a sim card wearing sportswear before.
Credits
Director Cieron Magat
DP Nathalie Pitters
Camera Assistant Pierfrancesco Cioffi
Co Producer Akinola Davies Jnr
Makeup Bobana Parojcic
Music EMG “Mother Funk” (The Trilogy Tapes)
Styling Annoushka Giltsoff
Colorist Tim Smith
Creative Direction Ben Drury
Casting TM Casting (Mischa Notcutt & Troy Fearn)
Models Mudi, Jonah, Jim, Louis, Kai, Josh, Mike, Isaac, Kaise, Izzie