Time Travel for Spring

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>> Short and sharp, short and sharp here.  Bish bash bosh.  Over and out.  The theme of the day… yah?

The Prada menswear film by artist Yang Fudong has been making its rounds quite slowly which makes sense, given that it's a slow burner of a short that takes a few view to really get your head round it.  Yang has scarily captured an amalgamation of my drifting in and out of sleepy multi-part dreams that I used to have after watching a particularly exciting/unintentionally funny/gripping Chinese period drama series with my mum back in the day.  Yang throws in a mixture of Tang, Song, Ming, Qing dynasties as well as elements of 20s Shanghai into his black and white dreamscape with contemporary Prada providing the jarring note.  Ok, so maybe in my childhood wishy washy dreams, Prada didn't really figure into it but the rest of it is totally giving me flashbacks of those times of intense drama series watching.

Period confusion dreams aside, Yang's explorations of the rapid onslaught of modernity in China isn't a particularly new theme but I think all of his surrealist touches and period clashing together with Prada's own forward-thinking aesthetic (so forward that sometimes it goes backwards looking at the Brady Bunch offerings of menswear A/W 10-11?) makes "First Spring" a bit of a mesmerising hit.  On a final serious note, the tagline is genuinely weighing in with me: "the whole year's work depends on a good start in spring."  Change is a-coming…

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20 comments

  3. Video is sweet, indeed. The clothes on the other hand, boring. But the value of the promo is high. Overall it’s about time fashion houses started to make better use of the internet and it’s potential to show off clothing. But this is not the future, it’s tha past represented by Prada.

  8. Mindblowing aesthetic, that’s for sure, and I really like the concept of a shortfilm instead of an usual ad. But is it just me, or could there be a bit more of a storyline? Maybe abstract as Kelly said, but still it feels a bit like watching an overlong commercial which kinda counteracts the novelty factor?!

  14. “Yang throws in a mixture of Tang, Song, Ming, Qing dynasties as well as elements of 20s Shanghai into his black and white dreamscape with contemporary Prada providing the jarring note.”
    wow, you’ve got it all down! i wrote a blog post on this film as well because, being Chinese and sharing the director’s last name, I felt I just had to write SOMETHING about it. I wasn’t totally sure which dynasties were being referenced, though. Overall, I really liked it. It was a very PRETTY film, of course. But, it also took me back to my last college course on modern Chinese history. Seeing the Prada models invade a dream world China was a very literal way of saying, MODERN LUXURY IS INVADING CHINA

  17. Absolutely GENIOUS!!!
    U wont believe but everytime an scene came out i stoped it and it was like stareing a piece of art (which is, actually).
    Pictures that i “took” the same as u: 1, 5, 6, 9, 10, 14 and 17!
    I think Miuccia would be proud and hire us, for sure hehehe!!!
    XXXXx

  20. Gosh they look so elegant and pretty. Really reminds me of In the mood for Love or 2046 with the girls and the timeless look. Oh and so agree with the chinese period dramas so entertaining the classics are always the best!! I espesh like the old period dramas with all the magic and gods etc involved so much better than the recent things i’ve seen.

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