Nowness by Mean to Me : Agyness Deyn's Dark Side

"Mean to Me" by McDermott and McGough
Looks can kill. Model Agyness Deyn makes the startling transformation from blonde ingenue to raven-haired vamp in Mean To Me, a short film noir directed by artist duo David McDermott and Peter McGough. Shot in the latters anachronous 1932 Manhattan apartment, replete with art deco furniture, the 13-minute romp portrays Deyn as a victimized starlet consumed by passion and greed. Exacting revenge upon her abusive lover (Law and Orders Linus Roache), Deyns femme fatale channels those of the past, notably Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity. A familiar sight on the runway for Chanel, Burberry and Alexander Wang, Deyn seduces on screen in Zac Posens pitch-perfect gowns, Guerlain's Shalimar perfume and an iridescent string of Mikimoto pearls. Such attention to historical detail is classic McDermott and McGough—the pair have lived and dressed as 19th-century gentlemen for three decades now—and gives this cinematic time capsule a period authenticity, shadowed with allusions to Hitchcock and Fritz Lang. Following the recent gala premiere in New York, Mean to Me will hit the festival circuit before landing at McDermott & McGoughs October exhibit at the Kunsthalle Wien, Austria.

Nowness by Lily Donaldson's Flying Hair

A Slow-mo Session with Sam McKnight
Internationally renowned hairstylist Sam McKnight teases out the unseen calm in two seconds of a thrashing blonde mane in this slow-motion film shot by photographer Matthew Donaldson. As his model daughter Lily spins 360 degrees, her hair buffeted by four wind machines, Donaldson stretches two seconds into two hypnotic minutes, capturing every exquisite movement at 1,000 frames per second. In a world where technology is increasingly maligned for encouraging us to hide from reality, there is a welcome irony here: Using the super-high definition Phantom Gold HD—a camera initially developed for monitoring missile flights—Donaldson distills a hyper-real tranquility. The film is also a paean to Ara Gallant, one of the great session hairdressers of the 1960s and the inventor of the flying hair technique. I love using wind on hair, and I love anything to do with the outdoors—like windy beaches and mountains, McKnight says. Not that nature is required for coveted bouncy locks. The two girls who could move their hair without any wind machines were Linda Evangelista and Yasmin Le Bon, he reminisces. They were legendary for the ability to shake their hair even slightly and it could fill two pages. Working with make-up artist Val Garland and a suitably dreamy soundtrack by Zero 7, McKnight and Donaldson have created a film with a poignant message: Life may be ephemeral and precious—but isnt it beautiful?