“The fact that a black trans woman can create this concept with one of the greatest minds in fashion is already a 100 percent a win-win,” says Honey Dijon in the latest Dispatch for Dover Street Market. The Berlin-based DJ and producer launched her line aptly titled Honey Fucking Dijon, which includes everything from colorful graphic T-shirts to leather bags for toting records, with DSM earlier this year.
Dijon is featured in the seventh installment of its Dispatch series, written and directed by DSMLA correspondent Rose Schlossberg. From vintage talk shows to visual travelogue and from LA to Tokyo, DSM’s Dispatches capture the spirit of Dover Street Markets around the world and its ethos of Beautiful Chaos through Schlossberg’s inventive filmmaking and comedic humor.
The latest dispatch marks the first time Schlossberg isn’t in front of the camera since she started working with DSM in 2018. To learn more about Schlossberg’s filmmaking, her time as a DSM correspondent, and what inspires her, we called her up in LA.
How did you get into film?
When I was in high school I started getting into kind of music documentaries like D. A. Pennebaker’s Bob Dylan movie and then, I guess I was just a big Bob Dylan fan, because then I liked the Martin Scorsese, Bob Dylan series, then things like Monterey Pop.
When I went to Harvard for undergrad I took an intro to documentary filmmaking class. I studied with really great professors there and they had amazing guest speakers all the time. I just got exposed to a lot, a huge range of nonfiction and experimental filmmaking there that was really special and kind of opened my eyes to all the different ways that you could make videos.
When you went to Harvard, did you know that you already were interested in this type of filming?
No, I didn’t. I thought I was going to study international relations.
Oh wow.
I didn’t really know what I wanted to study. Then I found the film program, this intro class seemed really cool. I just got really into it. I thought I wanted to be a documentary filmmaker. Then I did it kind of interdisciplinary arts program at NYU for a Master’s Degree where I started making more experimental videos and performing in my own videos.
What were some of your early projects?
A project called End Times Girls Club, which was sort of spoofy, like survival hacks for girls. Then I moved to LA and I sort of was working as a writer and trying to direct stuff. Adrian Joffe [President of Comme Des Garcons and Dover Street Market] saw some of the End Times Girls Club videos that I’d made and saw the character that I was being in those and thought that I would make a funny, sort of not-fashion-world spokesperson, for Dover Street.
The dispatches are kind of quirky and funny in the same way. Is that something that you like to bring to your projects?
Yeah, I think that’s just my sense of humor. I think humor is a way in for me that I like and it’s really hard. So I think that being funny is hard and something that makes it like a fun challenge for me.
You said Adrian saw those videos and then approached you about working with Dover Street?
Yeah, so actually my mom was serving as ambassador to Japan and kind of got to know Adrian. Then she was a host for Rei Kawakubo’s Met Gala. When they did that, I guess she was telling Adrian about what I did and he asked to see it and I think he thought that this sort of irreverence was a good fit.
So how did you come up with the concept?
I think he [Adrian Joffe] just thought that would be funny. They don’t really do any advertising. I guess he had done his own dispatches where he would send out sort of offbeat, almost blog posts emails at a certain point. Then he got tired of doing that. I think that was maybe 10 years ago. He had liked that idea of updates from Dover Street. We kind of developed this plan. Then it just became a pretty free form thing where they tell me about things that are coming up, that they want to focus on, then I pitched them different ideas and it’s been really collaborative and fun.
Do you have a background in fashion?
I’m interested in it and I care about style. I did an internship with Marc Jacobs when I was 16 which is really funny, but, it’s never been my thing. Adrian teases me that I don’t know anything about fashion and that it’s sort of funny for me to be a spokesperson for them.
Have you tried to change your approach at all?
This one is the first one that I’m not in, which I’m very pleased about. I would like for it to exist not dependent on me and my personality. I think there are more interesting things in the world.
What inspired this latest dispatch?
For this video I wanted to do a portrait driven by Honey Dijon’s music and her energy. We filmed her set at a festival in downtown LA and I was inspired by the footage of Otis Redding from Monterey Pop, where he is silhouetted with washes of color from stage lights.
So, we shot on 16mm film, and the cinematographer, Robbie Corral, did a really good job capturing Honey in a kind of trance, her form abstracted and in communion with the music and the crowd. I just tried to capture how talented and charismatic she is — and even though she doesn’t want to be a role model, she is one.
