Storm is our second major work celebrating the Rococo era with all its weirdness and hidden wickedness. Almost a decade after we made the "Ghost" editorial, it was an exciting challenge to revisit this period and portray it in a different way.
First and Foremost – Jewelry
It all began with the jewelry. We were working on the concept of a "shapeshifting" object, the trick when an object pretends to be something else. A necklace that pretends to fall apart, a signet ring covered with drapery. Those designs gave us the feeling of Rococo – never straightforward, never direct. Once the connection was found, all the pieces fell into place and the concept became a full collection.
This time we dived deeper into Rococo darkness, and the jewelry reflected it. Silver skeletal arms, white porcelain skulls, countless moons and stars – all tied together around this familiar image of Rococo, but not as a recreation, more as an impression of the era.
Marble Veiled Skull Ring → · Mr Moon Pendant → · Silver Bone Pendant → · Silver Bone Earring → · Veiled Signet Ring → · Storm Collection →
The Stage – How Storm Began
The idea was to create a soft surreal vision for this story, like a midday dream in the countryside, full of flower scents and the sounds of insects – weird and charming. The whole editorial feels heavily perfumed, infused with the scent of late-summer blooms. Everything was shot in a studio: the grasses, late-summer blooms, stormy skies in the background – a grand decoration for the story to unfold against.
The scenes were serene but definitely eerie and dark – ancient ruins with a gilded console table and a gigantic bouquet of flowers in the middle, a meadow full of grasses and flowers in which a heavily decorated sofa happened to appear. The whole shoot maintained a dark, tense atmosphere. The surrealism and mysticism in these photographs elevated the campaign into the realm of magical realism.
Behind the scenes of Storm.
The Movie
The second part of our editorial was another story altogether – a short film. While remaining melancholic and unsettling, we added a note of comedy to the project.
The film was inspired by 18th-century European theatres with scenographic transformations mid-act, French paper theatres, and countless oil portraits of noblewomen and socialites from the Rococo era.
A Rococo lady in full attire, wearing a tall wig and dressed in silk, wandered through tall grass gathering flowers into a cauldron while whispering enchantments. A sudden church bell caught her off guard, and she hurried towards a bicycle standing among nearby ruins. Dressed in an enormous robe à la française, she mounted the bicycle and began a journey with her cauldron full of flowers.
Then the decoration began to move – the entire background was set in motion to imitate the feeling of riding a bicycle, the very scenographic transformation trick we used in the film. When she arrived, the scenery changed, and so did the mood. Our Rococo witch, now covered with a black veil, began conjuring spells. She moved faster and faster, laughing and whispering. Finally, the first drops of rain began to fall. A few seconds later, the storm broke.
Our team still can't decide whether she is preventing a ship from reaching the shore or sinking one with her foe on board.
Storm reads as surreal and mischievous, but not only that. Its theatricality – the decorations, the changing backdrop, the character herself – almost places you in the first row of an old theatre, where in the dim light it becomes difficult to tell the difference between reality and magic.
