ABOVE & BEYOND
Melbourne-based filmmakers Jessie Oldfield and Adam Murfet have had a phenomenal response to date for their second fashion film produced for label above, including being selected by L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival for its No Home screening and Portable for inclusion in its Fashion On Film Festival held in New York City.
Directing duo Jessie Oldfield and Adam Murfet have been collaborating since 2007 and began C-KOL in 2012 in Melbourne, Australia. C-KOL (which stands for Certain Kind Of Light) is a video production and communication studio specialising in storytelling across video, installation, publishing and strategic communication, both for the online and offline worlds.
Murfet has collaborated with some of fashions most prolific influences including Marc Jacobs, Michael Kors, Erin Wasson and Nylon Magazine. Oldfield’s love for movement, visual emotion and storytelling has influenced her career to date, including projects across film, television, digital production and newer experiential mediums. This is Oldfield and Murfet’s second production for above, a follow up from their successful 2011 fashion film titled ‘Level’.
The duo’s film premiered at the Portable screening last month amongst a host of other international filmmakers and designers, showcasing C-KOL and Melbourne fashion label above to an international audience, and paving a place for C-KOL in the fashion film scene which is flourishing across the globe.
The short fashion film, titled ‘Shift’, explores the fluidity of motion and presence in the moment, with movement providing an insight into a woman’s confidence shown through above’s clothing and features pieces from above’s autumn/winter 2012 collection. The body becomes the medium for interpreting emotion and style within the suburban playground.
These women move through suburbia with purpose and direction where we witness various shifts in structure and look, which builds layers of movement and personality with emphasis on the clothing. Each woman selects one part, multiple parts, opposing parts, matching parts and reassembles them to reinvent herself. The fluidity of body, shape and form is projected as a way of interpreting her emotion and style.
Movement is an insight into each woman’s confidence. It’s her way of speaking and bearing exactly who she is. Instead of words, she uses her body to speak for her. The fluidity of the motion, the presence in the moment, it’s intuitive and meant to be. The women may be wearing different garments, but their collage represents one collection. She is a sum of her shifting parts.
Nyssa Marrow and Kerry Findlow, the designers behind above, aim to produce classic, wearable shapes that are re-imagined from a structural point of view, with each collection centring around basic, classic wardrobe staples. above has been shortlisted for the L’Oreal Designer of the Year Award cementing their forward-thinking position in the Australian fashion industry.