Tom Ford isn't the only fashion eye getting his cinematic ya-yas out this season. Ok, so contemporary designer Corey Lynn Calter's whirl behind the camera is not a full-length feature film, but a short. A very short short at that.
Corey opted out of presenting her Spring 2010 collection on the runway during the recent endless fashion calendar in Los Angeles, instead giving press and pals an experience that animated the clothes and her direction for the season in a way that a fashion show couldn't scratch.
For the intimate October 27 event, some 50 guests filed into the candle-lit Lead Apron Gallery, a white-washed, blank space on Melrose Avenue owned and operated by Jonathan Brown, who also heads the new Lead Apron Bookstore across the way (more on that sensational find later). Rachel Leigh Cooke and writer Tasha Nita Adams arrived in the same teal CLC frocks, and took it all in stride by posing together for the camera. Magda and Alex Berliner, George Kostiopoulos, shop owner Hillary Rush and Bravo reality star Merle Ginsberg clanked bubbly with a surprising turnout of the city's press (surprising, because many of them admitted to skipping so much of the month's fashion goings-on) Los Angeles Mag's Laurie Pike, Style Section LA’s Emili Vesilind, The L.A. Times's Melissa Magsaysay, Fashion Week Daily’s Jennifer Chan. "I don't think L.A. is the venue for shows anymore," Corey told me. "I miss that homegrown feeling that L.A. Fashion Week had when I first arrived here, before I had a line. Something about the creativity that existed then. It felt cooler and underground, not like what was going on in New York. With this short film, I wanted something hopeful, playful. An opportunity to show the clothes, without doing a conventional format."
What we got was an 8-minute presentation that filled three walls in the front room. A model appeared on the wall to our left, her foot step audible as she magically appeared on the wall in front of us. There she stopped and answered the question posed: "What is your favorite food?" ("Ketchup," said one); or "What instrument do you play?" ("Whistle."); or "What's your favorite word?" ("Cha-ching," deadpanned another model inciting laughter through the room.) She then moved on to the third wall to our right, with another model already on her heels answering the next question.
The result was crisp, entertaining and dazzling in the most lo-fi of ways. The crowd was definitely charmed. (Let's hope Corey gets it up on her site sooner than later...)

From concept to final edit, the project took only five, mad crazy days, noted Glenn, who was proudly showing his own latest work, a suede-covered tome chronicling the last decade of his subversive art installations. (Yes, "overachievers" doesn't even begin to describe this pair, who also happen to be the parents of two beautiful girls). The models were shot individually at Smashbox Studios on October 7. Glenn and his tech-savvy team then painted out the background and seamed in the edit to give the appearance of an endless loop. "The great part about it is it was this spontaneous thing," enthused Glenn. "Corey was also very aggressive in keeping it lo-fi and keeping the feeling of it all spontaneous."
Supper followed, elegantly spread out in white, down to the dozens of white candles flickering across two expansive tables. Stylist Jessica Paster tickled her Blackberry during most of the three courses prepped by Savore, while Decades' Cameron Silver kept us in stitches on our end of the table by taking the silk scarf Corey gifted everyone and wrapping it into an ascot, then a turban. Just the kind of spontaneous flights of fancy we've all been longing for.


Photos: Courtesy of Chris Weeks/CLC, except trio during film, Magda Berliner in scarf, by Rose Apodaca