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At the Mugler show on Sunday night, models including Mona Tougaard, Precious Lee and Irina Shayk stomped the runway in a different way, posing for drone cameras that buzzed around the room. At one point, Amelia Gray ran across the space and ripped a huge curtain down, to reveal fellow model Joan Smalls. Later, rising star Colin Jones posed languidly in front of another curtain, which fell and created a billow of smoke. The audience cheered, and as the final curtain fell, it revealed the entire backstage.
Choreographer Eric Christison had a matter of days to pull the concept together. “We were looking at old films like Dracula, Vampire, Flashdance that had dark shadow play and how we could incorporate that to create layers of reveals and people,” he says. “We wanted to give a glimpse of the dark and sinister Mugler codes that [creative director] Casey [Cadwallader] wanted to emulate.”
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Christison is part of a new generation of choreographers or movement directors that are becoming increasingly important cogs in the fashion machine. These professionals can not only help brands create viral show moments, they can also support the models, who now — with more shows and campaigns than ever — have less time to perfect their walk or their poses before being thrust into the spotlight.
Polish movement director Pat Boguslawski was responsible for the theatrical movement in the viral Maison Margiela couture show this season, where each model embodied a different character that played out in their sultry runway walk, giving the show its memorable, other-worldly feel.
“I received around 1,000 messages the day after the show and gained 150,000 followers. A month later, people still keep coming up to me to say congrats,” Boguslawski says. The industry is becoming more aware of the important role movement directors can play, he adds. “When I started in 2015, it was so hard. For the first three years, people were like, ‘that’s cool but do we need you?’ Over the last three years they’ve understood.”
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Movement direction in fashion was pioneered by choreographer and dancer Stephen Galloway in the ’90s, who before the profession was even established, choreographed campaigns and helped produce runway shows for brands like Saint Laurent and Versace (he now works with Miley Cyrus). But it was only in recent years that a new generation of dancers transitioned into choreographing fashion shows and campaigns on a wider scale. Theatrics, set arrangements and a unique approach to moving a model down the runway and back again, can help a brand set itself apart during the crowded show season — and now more than ever, designers are striving to stand out.
It’s not always about performance, like Margiela. Boguslawski also worked on Peter Hawkings’s second Tom Ford show in Milan, where he focused on giving the models “energy” and perfecting their tempo. “I make sure to create a language for the brand through movement,” Boguslawski says. “At the end, it’s about the clothes and how to sell them. So I need to think about how the clothes will move.”
Ryan Chappell began his career as a dancer and choreographer, and got into movement direction after a brief stint in design under Phoebe Philo at Celine. This season, he worked on Knwls in London, then Alexander McQueen and Marine Serre in Paris. Marine Serre’s Café de Serre show on Monday was focused on daily life (models carried water bottles, pizza boxes and plants). Chappell encouraged the models to relax into it and look at the audience or look at each other, rather than the more rigid walks of a traditional runway show. “Today it’s all about the environment of a show: the attitude, the set, the walk,” he says. “We’re selling the dream, and I think that the dreams are becoming more and more important than ever.”
Alongside Mugler, Christison choreographed shows for Simone Rocha, Jean Paul Gaultier x Simone Rocha couture, Coperni and Vaquera this season. In between, he flew to Rome to choreograph a fragrance campaign. As movement direction receives more recognition, “I’m busier than ever,” he says between rehearsals at Vaquera last Monday. “It’s been like this since January.”
Creating a viral moment
Movement has become more of a focus as fashion shows have evolved into social media content engines, and even live broadcasts. A lot of fashion publications now take a social-first approach to show coverage, with a focus on video, says Emma Davidson, fashion features director at Dazed . “Movement allows designers to create a fantasy. But if we’re being less earnest, it is also a way to create a viral moment. You can do this with casting or the front row, with novelty in the collection, like Coperni, or with movement on the runway. The effect is the same: a boost in sales and brand awareness.”
“We’re seeing so much content be put out. If users don’t engage with a show video in the first couple of seconds, we know that it is not going to do well in the algorithm. It doesn t catch on, it doesn t burn in your memory, create desire and fuel the machine,” Christison says.
Movement also engages the online community by creating a halo effect of reactive memes and tutorials on social media. “After Leon Dame’s angry walk for Margiela [choreographed by Boguslawski], people created hundreds of memes,” Davidson says, “or after Vaquera started its angry walk in 2019, there were tutorials online on how to walk like a Vaquera or a Balenciaga model. More and more brands are getting wise to the fact that movement can create a lot of post-show [buzz].”
Vaquera models’ angry, head-on speed walk became a trademark. But for AW24, the brand decided to change it up, allowing the audience to better see the clothes. At rehearsal, Christison gestured to the models, many of whom had walked previous shows, to slow down and put their shoulders back. The collection is inspired by money, and Christison devised the movement based on two references: a viral video of somebody walking past a news reporter trying to steal attention, and fashion shows in malls in America during the late ’80s.
The subtleties of walking
Fashion shoots used to be up to two weeks long and brands used to show just once or twice a year, leaving more time for preparation and rehearsal. Now, typically, a shoot will be a matter of hours or days, while the bulk of show prep happens the day before. In this new environment, models have less time to perfect their movement.
Movement directors play a crucial role in this accelerated process. “Casting directors book girls based on faces. They don’t look for girls that know how to walk,” Boguslawski says. “Back in the day there were modelling schools, now it’s agents quickly teaching girls how to walk.”
Chappell directed the movement for Seán McGirr’s Alexander McQueen debut, orchestrating the timing and energy of the walk. “There’s so many subtleties that people don’t understand walking really well, especially in a pair of heels,” Chappell says. “How much hip you put into it, whether you’re swinging your arms a lot; how your shoulders are moving, whether your neck’s moving or where your eyes are looking up. Do you cross the feet? Do you not cross the feet? Do you hang on the hip? When it’s done well, you don’t notice. That’s the beauty of it.”
Sometimes the show mechanism is tricky. Christison did a huge show a couple of years ago at Gucci where there were eight entrances, 150 models and one backstage. “We had to allocate all these different entrances and all the four runway paths were like moving sidewalks, like in an airport. It took two days to rehearse.”
Brands are increasingly looking for the “Margiela effect” without understanding the process, Boguslawski says. “Everybody wants everything so fast. They ask if I can come four hours before the show and make it look amazing. I did eight days, 12 to 15 hours a day for Margiela. It takes time to make an iconic show.”
In the future, movement directors hope to be incorporated into the process earlier, both across campaigns and shoots, to help drive the creative from the beginning. But brands and creative teams are having to get used to the extra voice in the room. “There can be challenges,” Christison says. “We’re integrating into a very saturated and clearly defined industry that has its hierarchies and has its roles. It has been really interesting to navigate.”
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