How luxury brands can tell anti-elitist stories
Byredo commissioned South London photographer and director Gabriel Moses to make a film celebrating Bal d’Afrique, one of the luxury brand’s earliest fragrances. Described by the brand as a “love letter to Africa”, the perfume was inspired by the founder Ben Gorham’s father’s time living and travelling across the continent. The film, produced by DIVISION, was launched in Spring 2023 to draw attention to this now-classic fragrance. Still in his mid-20s, Moses was given an open brief for the project: to compose a piece of storytelling inspired by the fragrance. What would he show as a ball in Africa?
If the scent itself is an experiment in memory and fantasy, Moses’s film is a vision of the extraordinary beauty of everyday life in Nigeria, the country of his mother and grandparents. Filming took place with a mixture of models and streetcast actors. The script, which included much improvisation, shows marriage, a taxi journey, a plane journey, dance, and the conversation of the young and the old, all in and around an anonymous West African city.
“If the scent itself is an experiment in memory and fantasy, Moses’s film is a vision of the extraordinary beauty of everyday life in Nigeria, the country of his mother and grandparents.”
The execution is never less than exquisite. But in subtly shifting attention to the earthy vernacular, and the stuff of daily life, Moses and production company DIVISION have created a film that suggests a subtle new direction for luxury communication for which they won a Yellow Pencil in Fashion Film.
“With a lot of luxury brands, I like to dismiss any elitism that might exist. I like to ground everything,” Gabriel Moses says. “Byredo were on the same page. We're not always able to tell such honest stories with brands that position themselves as luxury. So it was a blessing.” Describing his relationship with clients, and maintaining his creative vision, he says: “I'm quite a stubborn individual in the sense that I'm like, ‘This is what I want to do. And I don't have to do it with you.’ I'm happy saying ‘No.’”