Stromae music video (day 1)

A few weeks ago I was ask to style the new music video of Stromae. For those who don’t know him, Stromae is a new and very talented  Belgian singer and songwriter. His latest song “Alors on danse” was number one for several weeks all over Europe. You might not remember his name but watching his video might help…

Even though it was very short notice, I was asked 1 week before the shooting, I immediately said yes as it’s something I had never done before. I was suppose to style Stromae and all the extras who would appear in the video according to the script.

 

I met Jerome Guiot, the director, who also directed the “Alors on danse” video, to discuss the direction I was going to take. The challenge being that as a designer you are constantly trying to illustrate you vision of fashion, life … but as a stylist, working for a director, you have to illustrate his vision through your eyes/mind… Also baring in mind all the technical details. For example some prints, materials might look good in real life but will look awful in video or might even create distortion or noise on the screen.

As he is quite a new artist the budget for the styling was not huge so I had to work with what people already had and then add some other pieces I could find.

A few days before we started shooting, I met Stromae at his house to review his clothes. I found it quite funny as basically the first time I met him, I was in his bedroom, browsing through his wardrobe. We picked out some clothes that would be great for the video…

 

The team and I had to be on the set at 7 am to organise everything. Note that the set was a real 2 rooms apartment on the 23rd floor of a Belgian estate. And that the team was a group of 20 people.

So 20 persons, 1 camera, a few lights and some other things that I can’t really name… made it really crowded! The bathroom became the make up and styling room, the terrace became the smoking area, the kitchen was part of the set so we had to eat and breathe in the bedroom (who also became the production area). And then the rest was just packed up with things…

 

On and all the day went smoothly, we worked until 8 pm. Dressing the two kids, Stromae and the girl was easy. Especially as they kept the same clothes through the whole day.

I took these pictures on the first day. The story being that Stromae is in “his” apartment with is “wife” and “two children”. They don’t love each other anymore, they fight, argue and plates are being broken… Just a typical day 😉

(To see the rest of my Stromae adventures, click here 1–2–3)