INTO THE BARGAIN: ONCE UPON A TIME BY CÉLINE FERRIE

Tucked away towards the back of the Magasins Généraux exhibition hall at the IFM Master of Arts in Fashion Image’s end of term show ‘17S’, lay a series of books invitingly propped open. Inside, they revealed a fantastical twisting of stories that have accompanied the adolescence of children for centuries. For Céline Ferrié - whose childhood was marked by the uncanny animations of Tim Burton and the escapism of Harry Potter - it was essential for her work to reflect the beauty of these age-old tales, but within the context of the modern day. ‘Once Upon A Time,’ is the culminating project of Ferrié’s time at IFM. A triptych of sorts, she reimagines the stories and characters of three classic fairy tales, the Little Mermaid, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty.

Reinterpretation was a word Ferrié repeated many times when referring to this work, as she sought to acknowledge the grim reality of these stories, whose roots are far removed from the sanitized happily-ever-afters depicted by the likes of Disney. However, Ferrié also sought to elicit smiles and tug on the nostalgic heartstrings of her viewers, and this duality is readily present in her project.

In conceptualizing a campaign and pop-up store for the shoe brand Nodaleto, Ferrié turned her attention to two rather unappreciated characters. The camera is focused on Cinderella's two evil stepsisters, pertinently renamed in this retelling as “Noda” and “Leto,” as they battle it out in the roller-rink in pursuit of the “Golden Shoe.”

In selecting Nodaleto as her jumping off point, Ferrié aimed to maintain a strong thoroughline of the brand’s identity, while also challenging them creatively - a consistent theme throughout the overall project. The final images of Ferrié’s self-styled shoot capture the gritty ruthlessness of this pair, but her retro artistic direction and dynamic shots bring levity and quite a bit of fun to the piece. In another twist, Ferrié actually cast two real-life sisters to embody the roles, as she felt that a high level of comfortability between the models was key for executing such a brawl, perfectly encapsulated by their battered faces and the stomach-turning finger-stomping (portraying a level of aggression that anyone with a sibling can relate to some degree). Such action packed images are no challenge for Ferrié, being a dancer herself, and physicality and movement are consistent motifs in her work, within this collection and beyond.

When it came time to realize her exploration into the story of Sleeping Beauty, as with Nodaleto, Ferrié took inspiration yet again from the works of Tim Burton, specifically in terms of bringing life and depth to outcast characters. Working through the lens of young, provocative, and gender-bending Parisian brand Pressiat, Ferrié zeroed in once more on the story’s villain - the witch Maleficent.

Casting is crucial in any creative project, and Ferrié’s choice of drag queen and multidisciplinary talent Mystic Electric to embody this complexly wicked character was spot on. The physicality and highly expressive nature of Mystic’s performance and Ferrié’s directorial style work symbiotically to create very strong visuals, particularly in an image depicting a close up of the former’s face.

This portrait may at first seem elementally more simple than others within the collection, but upon just seconds of further consideration, proves completely captivating.

Mystic’s uncanny red eyes and mostly-opaque glittery skin confront the viewer. While small peeks of warm-toned flesh and the depth of emotion within their facial expression reveal the humanity of this character - and succinctly captures the essence of Ferrié’s retelling of this tale: no longer banished to the sidelines, this witch dances on the ashes of her destruction.

In the third and final installment of Ferrié’s project moves away from the idea of villainy, but brings to the forefront a motif that is also apparent in both her reimaginings of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty; queer identity. To circle back to the first leg of this project; though not exclusively, rollerderbys existence as a cultural and athletic phenomenon has long created a space for female-identifying and generally LGBTQ+ individuals to explore different expressions of femininity through full contact sport. In Ferrié’s exploration of Maleficent however, reflections on gender and sexuality are more readily apparent to the viewer due to Mystic’s embodiment of the role.

But it is in her reinterpretation of classic fairytale, The Little Mermaid, that Ferrié fully dives in to the unraveling and recontextualization of identity’s intersections with both the fictional and the real.

To do so, she created a thorough campaign proposal for Danish brand Rains, synthesizing The Little Mermaid’s origins, with what she described as the “boundary pushing experimental runway style” of the outerwear company. During Ferrié’s research into the story’s author, Hans Christian Andersen,

the most striking elements of her project were developed. Though famed for his fairytale compendium, few are aware of just how closely Andersen’s real-life may have inspired his fantastical stories, with it generally being accepted - due to his prolific journal-keeping - that Andersen experienced attraction to both men and women. More specifically, one can even view his famed tale on the unrequited love between mermaid and man (as in the original version, the prince is never made aware of the true nature of his savior and marries a human princess, causing the distraught Little Mermaid to dissolve into sea foam), as a parallel to Andersen’s own unreciprocated and historically taboo feelings for friend Edvard Collin.

His love-struck declarations are expressed in snippets of letters that Ferrié proposed to project into one of Rains’ Copenhagen boutiques. Ferrié’s images for this section, depicting an androgynous “love story between two beautiful creatures” are interesting in their own right, but it is their rooting in this tragic tale, as well as her conceptualization for their implementation within a Rains campaign that really impresses.

All of the pieces presented at the 17S exhibition revealed numerous ways in which fashion editorial work and creative direction can be vehicles of strong messaging and beautiful imagery.

However, Ferrié’s Once Upon a Time served as a profoundly enjoyable exemplar of the multi-pronged capabilities of fashion as it intersects with storytelling. Though those she chose to reinvent may have all come from Northern Europe, across every culture worldwide, fairy tales, myths, and fables have long served as powerful communicative tools.

In connecting with the reader or listener at an emotional and unguarded level, they impart important messages about all aspects of the human condition. In her project Ferrié sought to harness the familiarity of such universal references, and “appeal to the collective unconscious,” successfully creating an opus that audiences will both remember and perhaps even learn from.