PARIS — A high-end menswear fashion company revealed more than its clothing line in Paris last week.
According to a Forbes report, Mugler’s “Brothers of Arcadia” 2012 collection raised eyebrows when it provided runway attendees with a “graphic” 14-page booklet and premiered an XTube and YouTube video of nude men and women.
The mag was produced by Mugler creative director Nicola Formichetti, better known as Lady Gaga’s “fashion director.”
A SFW “Brothers of Arcadia” video, inspired by “Greek gods” cavorting naked on the beach and directed by Branislav Jankic appeared on on XTube the day of the show with a more explicit version appearing the following day.
Formichetti described the video as the “moving mood board,” that features the men leaving the beach and meeting up with women at what appaears to be a porn movie set.
“While house music thuds dully in the background, the men proceed to dump a large quantity of what looks like champagne on a kneeling woman. Footage of two lions fighting for dominance is intercut with graphic footage of a man masturbating. A couple writhes on a bed. A man lingers over an X-rated magazine. What looks like milk runs down a woman’s exposed breasts,” the Forbes report said.
Formichetti said in a statement on XTube, “I was looking at Italian neo-realist cinema and then post that, where Fellini and Pasolini become more about myth and fantasy. At the same time I loved the idea and accessibility of pornography and that everyday voyeurism on XTube. Fashion is always referencing pornography, so there was an element in doing this film of just ‘cutting out the middleman,’ but it is an erotic fashion film nonetheless.
I think a lot of people now think that the porn around at the moment is ‘real’, but it is not. It is total fantasy, these people are like Olympian athletes of sex. What has changed is the look of pornography. I wanted to bring some of that excessive drama and the look of fantasy back to porn — to acknowledge something as over-the-top as Tinto Brass’ 'Caligula.' With the explicit sex scenes left in.”
Formichetti maintained that he’s interested in how porn drives technology.
“It is so user friendly on a porn site like XTube, so instantly about something you would be interested in. When you are alone you can be as free as you want, watch what you want and be who you are — you are not having your taste dictated to you like you are elsewhere. I liked the idea of people watching this film in that way.”
But the report said that the intersection of porn and fashion is nothing new, pointing to instances like designer Tom Ford’s infamous Gucci ad in which a woman pulls down her underpants to reveal her pubic hair shaved into a “G,” among others.
