Designer: Emilie Ghilaga

Models: Katie Schecter, Hannah Bronfman, Gabriella Campagna, Madeleine Rose and Dixie Appel & William Vitiello

Song: “Flash Gordon” of The Henry Millers- featuring Katie Schecter,  John MacCallum, Phil Nuttle & Frank Celenza

Director: Robert Kolodny

Robert Kolodny on the Concept of the Video and Collection:

Clothing is what you wrap your soul in to pronounce to the world how you are feeling and how you wish to be perceived. A garment is transformative, in that it can make you brave, elegant, understated, confident. When you buy an article of clothing you do so for the way it looks on your body, the way it influences your image, your style,the way it feels on your skin and the way it makes you feel within. Sexy, brilliant, extraordinary; clothing can reveal the true you or alternately the perceived you that your spirit longs for.

After first reviewing Emilie’s line, I was struck with the timelessness of the garments. The styles are evocative of a more classical chic, while maintaining a certain and defined air of contemporary youth culture. Something sure of heart and confident in ethos. There is an inborn sense of comfort and ease in the garments fluidity. The bold style of an Ayn Randian woman with an entrepreneurial cool, married to the grace and form of a Tchaikovsky-an ballerina. A free flow of form and function existing in harmonious duality. There a specificity of Manhattan’s past that seems to linger in the collections exhale. Transformative from the glamour of Metropolitan confidence, churned with open minded relaxation and sure spirit. To portray these factors in a series on none tangible images, it is of paramount importance to fill the frame with life, reality, and dreams; the stuff of possible fantasy and defined functionality. I saw lithe and willowy fingers tenderly caressing the velvety strap of a perfect dress. What does your mind say to your heart when your eyes views such a thing? It says, “I can feel that, and it feels great. I want it on my body.”

For the video I saw colors faded and baked like a Polaroid snapshot, while moving with modernity and style. I felt the cinematic soul of something as enigmatic as the Nouvelle Vague, as a tool of defined style through confident individuality. The aesthetic simplicity of a trapezoidal backdrop highlighted with key colors of nostalgic artifacts to exemplify the clothing’s voice. Frames composed with rustic influences of Diane Arbus, Cartier Bresson, Godard, and Truffaut. The dresses have a heart of color and so I sought for the video to be a kaleidoscope of love.  - ROBERT KOLODNY

 

Collaboration:

Rob and I (Emilie) view the world through very similar eyes. When on set with Rob, I do not reign, I sit back and relax because I know that whatever Rob is doing, is exactly what I would want someone to do. He is a quiet, unspeakably observative genius. We decided on some locations, I asked for a timelapse and good detail shots of the fabrics and dresses, the rest all came from Rob exquisitely pure and direct mind.

Pertinent Information:

Collaboration is key. With Love, Emilie Ghilaga has always been established with values of personal relationships and familial atmospheres, in order to instill comfort and confidence. Rob cast me in an independent film he was directing two years ago, and then contacted me in order to do this video. John and Katie of The Henry Millers, have been friends of mine for a very long time, growing up in the city, and are now producing incredible music. Katie has also been one of my muses for the past three collections. All of the models are my dear friends and very successful women in their own right. If you are capable of starting your own business in this economy, and planting your own seed in this world, and after continuous labor step back for brief moments and observe what you have created, it can be the single best lesson in your life. Watching myself, and my friends evolve and come into fruition is the purest truth of what it is to been conscious and human. It is always more beneficial to unite and achieve rather than stand alone, as long as your principles are born from the same root. You can put a billion dollars into a venture, but if it doesn’t have soul, if it doesn’t have love, it is of no real value.