Pastoral presented by Vertigo

Written by Lorin Mai, edited by Evar Hussayni

Moscow-based fashion brand «Vertigo», created by Lorin Mai, is a cross-cultural research and visual resource brand linking human experiences in the modern society. Living at the intersection of Russian and Kurdish backgrounds, the designer builds relationships between events and issues of the eastern region countries, highlighting the phenomenon of MENA integration in the design and art world.

Pastoral is a visual poem where the brand's garments meet meticulously arranged sets and a subtle audio landscape. This sultry reverie combines portraits and VHS flashbacks which depict Syrian everyday life — the main source of inspiration for Vertigo.

Separated from her Kurdish relatives, Lorin is fantasising about their lives through the lens of her fading childhood memories: echoes of emotions, smells and vibrations.

Artist Statement by Lorin Mai:

Pastoral is a memory transmission of naive childhood events depicted in the silent archival portraits and VHS cassettes. They’re supposed to remediate sensual aspects of the past. I haven’t visited my village ‘Farhia' in Syria for almost 10 years and the distance between me and my extended relatives has made me fantasise about their lives, getting in touch with their world, which is fundamentally different from mine.

I treasure my memories a lot, however some of them are impossible to visualise. It feels like a dream where you gain the authority of your actions, but then everything is falling apart. Those kinds of dreams are not supposed to be controlled - they need to be felt and reproduced. Taking any action destroys the illusion and deprives you of the distant point of view. My memories are a mixture of smells and vibrations: a horizon rushing in front of my eyes, a splash of noisy phrases, rose stickers in school notebooks with Arabic scripts, carefully hidden in the nightstand (the only private space), grandmother's false teeth in a yellow glass from Lee’s chocolate, sleeping outside under a mosquito net only to be woken up by the heat and then going back indoors, everyday dose of swear words always rolling off the tongue, but never hurting anyone, the sense of hot pavement under my feet, driving around in a pickup truck singing Massari with my cousins, fried eggs for breakfast, disappearing from the pan with the help of eight children's hands. But could it all be visualized?

Pastoral’s poster depicts a lonesome tree — I saw one in my village, Iranian new wave movies and Persian poetry. This tree shielded me and my siblings from the sultry sunlight, while we were playing and working in the fields. We used to hang off the branches, climb up to the top where you could see our home surrounded by nothing but the sunburnt wheat. There is a dialogue between two reporters who are looking for the village only through trees descriptions in Abbas Kiarostami’s «The Wind Will Carry Us»:

— We will head down from the mountains and you’ll see a huge tree!
— But there are lots of them, aren’t there? What’s next?
— There’s a path right by that tree. And that path is greener than anyone’s dreams.
— Is that a tall tree? It must be different from the others.
— From other lonely trees?

The tree symbolises the image of a person and how it accretes with the surroundings. I associate it with my late grandmother. Due to the events of the war I never got the chance to bid a proper farewell to her.
Being the elder and the matriarch of the family, she played a vital role in each of my relatives’ lives.

A bunch of people worked on Pastoral. Together with a director Georgiy Kazakov- Pokrovskiy and editor Ismail Guluev we created what we would love to call a visual poem. Here the brand's garments meet meticulously arranged sets which were designed by Alexandra Budarina. We worked with the family archives through symbolism: the objects are connected to the clothes and the nostalgia about Syria. The audio-landscape was created by Anton Kiyashev and it elaborately adds to the narrative by making memories physical: it’s a symbiosis of deconstructed instruments, strings plunks and barely audible dialogues.

Vertigo’s new seasonal collection is called «Kîme Ez?» («Who am I?»). It’s a story about simple joyful moments: just as in a Persian ghazal, all the images shape a poem about love towards your home and the feeling of admiration for Kurdish people, especially for all-female fighting units Jin-Jiyan-Azadi (Women, Life, Freedom). The everyday alchemy, symbols of yezidism, the new wave of Iranian cinema are all valuable parts of the human reflection in this tale. Designer Ruslan Nasir styled both «Pastoral» and «Kîme Ez?». His goal was to harmonise items in a flattering, yet sincere way, to tie his own childhood memories with the presence of Vertigo. There are several platitudes in the collection: you can see a white tailored galabeya-coat, childish-resembling knitwear created in a collaboration with Uzbekistan-born artist Yana Harasho, a vegan leather military suit inspired by Peshmerga troops and classic cut trousers with relaxed fit shirts.

Credit:

@vertigo_brand

Written by Lorin Mai @lawreanmawhee
Directed by Georgiy Kazakov-Pokrovskiy @doublesurname

DP Mario Kim @realmario
Edit Ismail Guluev @hdmi_king
Production and support @curatedmngmnt
Producer Marta Peleteiro @martapeleteiro
Music&sound Anton Kiyashev @anton.mp3
Voice Khanym Mamedova @euphoria6912
Style Ruslan Nasir @ruslaner
Set-Designer Alexandra Budarina @iamgrowingmyhairagain, set- Assistant Natalia Shaposhnikova @lockchenn, Maria Kostyleva @princess_and_porridge
Casting director Eugenia Kashtan @kashtan_eugenia Backstage Photographer Sasha Klimov @sashaklimovstudio

Muah Samira Alieva @samira.muah_
Muah assistant Kristina Selivanova @_kristina.selivanova_

Cast Daria Bakhshi @dablys, Bekzod Bobokulov @bbklvb, Evgeny Mezhibovskiy @evgenymezh, Arina Gavryushenko @arrinaaaaa, Rosha Sharipov @roshasharipov

1AD Slava Lavrentyev @senseykk
1AC Andrey Ivanov
Gaffer Sergey Logachev @kadrrdak
Color graiding Andrew Bushmin @andrew_bushmin
Analog VFX Dmitry Stukovnikov @stukovnikov
Titles, poster & graphic design Arsen Mollakaev @mollakaev
PM Dordzhi Komushev @dkomushev, Yurii Tarakanov @yurk_t Special Thanks - Anastasia Zaripova @nastyazr, Denis Firstov @firstov, Sofya Shpurova @in2weird, Maria Em @emismysurname, Pavel Amirov @inzhener_zemli, Alexander Korneev @sasha_rsvrn, Artur Shulga @migrvnt