90s youth culture film icon Gregg Araki has created a short film for Kenzo‘s fall/winter 15 collections. Shot in LA, Here Now is heavily inspired by the director’s Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy of psychedelic grunge flicks Totally Fucked Up (1993), The Doom Generation (1995), and Nowhere (1997), films that Kenzo designers Humberto Leon and Carol Lim saw in theaters as teens living in California.
“We have been huge fans of Gregg since our teens,” said Humberto Leon, “For us, he’s definitely a director of our generation.” Araki said that the film’s title, “came to me in a vision,” and he also explains that he wouldn’t have made the film for just anyone. “I feel like if it wasn’t KENZO and there was some inappropriate house I don’t know if I would have done it; because the fact that the clothes fit the world of the Teen Apocalypse trilogy already, that made it make sense,” Araki said, explaining that, “Otherwise it would have been too much, too hard to make it work. Because the clothes themselves have that free spirit, carefree and cool nature of those characters.”
As per Araki’s 90s films, the cast are a cherry-picked group of next-big-things. Central character Dark is played by Avan Jogia, who starred alongside James Franco in I Am Michael; burger-chucking Liltith is played by fashion favorite Nicole LaLiberte, who appears in HBO’s How To Make It In America and has been shot by David LaChapelle, Ellen von Unwerth and Patrick Demarchelier. Dark’s friend CowBoy is played by actor / singer / dancer Jacob Artist of Glee fame; and pink glitter-eyed Mel is played by Jane Levy, who will star in Monster Trucks next year.