USA Projects

My project will be a single channel video and installation about the British fashion icon, Isabella Blow. Instead of telling the arc of her life from beginning to end it will be comprised of ten vignettes each focusing on a certain aspect of her radical relationship to fashion and visual aesthetics.  Blow was a notorious eccentric, who worked as a fashion editor and had a outlandish personal style. She spent massive sums of money on a fantastical wardrobe because she believed in fantasy and beauty and thought they should be ever present in daily life.  She was not satisfied with the state of ordinary aesthetics and challenged people to expand their notions of beauty and drama.  Ultimately she was disappointed and spiraled into a depression that led to several dramatic suicide attempts. She finally succeeded by drinking weed killer while in a silver lame gown.

I am attracted to Isabella for several reasons, one of the most compelling being her understanding of her own appearance. While she embodied the purest idea of fashion she is often quoted as saying, “It pains me to say so, but I’m ugly. I know that’s subjective, so perhaps I should say instead that I’m striking.”  The idea that a woman so thoroughly dedicated to fashion and beauty but who found dressing in the morning painful, is a complex and interesting one that speaks to the standards society sets in regards to women and the way they look. This theme will be the core of the work; the struggle to insert originality and a new sense of the visual into a world dominated by the mediocre.  Also of interest to me is the financial aspect of her story.  Isabella was in a state of financial distress for most of her life.  She spent much more than she earned in her pursuit of visual perfection. While this was certainly her own addiction it also draws attention to the connection between beauty and money.

“Blow Me”, is currently in pre-production.  My main focus to this point has been to construct the wardrobe for the project.  The money I raise through this campaign will be used for several things.  It will go towards set construction, hiring an assistant for the shoot, paying my actress for her time and hiring a sound editor for postproduction. Any additional money will be used to purchase a HD video camera.  I plan on shooting the piece in my studio this coming March and to edit and master the project for June 2012.  Your financial help would be incredibly important to me in achieving these goals.  I thank you for taking the time to look at and think about my work.