WHY IS NAIVETY IMPORTANT TO CHARLES JEFFREY AND HOW DOES HE REPLICATE THIS IN HIS SHOWS?

In my opinion, your work needs a slight essence of naivety, I think it shows a youthfulness, originality, and playfulness! An element I adore about Charles Jeffrey’s brand is how he perceives his models or dress sense as a ‘character’. Despite, the child-like expression this can be associated as (I disagree to this perception), I see it as innovative and narrative. When considering how I want to style and produce my FMP imagery, I feel witnessing my model through this lens may enliven my creative senses more. I agree, there is a vulnerability in being naïve, however, as a creative I have found that when you lack some knowledge and don’t know the ins and outs of everything, you open yourself, and your personality out more. I believe I proved this within the 360 campaign, where I allowed myself to just run with the journey and see where it takes me.

In an interview with Susanna Cordner for Medium.com (a visionary platform for expert and undiscovered voices) Jeffrey iterates how his dancers are a mixture of professionals and people who just want to be part of the performance- “that energy is key to the show, and its fine because it brings a texture to the dancing”. I think as students, we put ourselves under immense pressure to establish the perfect, and the outcomes don’t always present the narrative we desire due to this flawless manner. Jeffrey has demonstrated here, that merging the elite with the emerging presents an outcome just as robust.

Coming into this year I said to myself “for your final imagery Ellie, you will have a professional model, makeup stylist, photographer, and videographer, so everything goes swimmingly, and your images will be ‘perfect’.” Within the duration of the last 6 months, I have experienced how being naïve within processes- having a random person as a model, doing the photography individually; pushes the intended storytelling much farther. Looking towards my FMP now, I want to embrace the naivety of being a student. Not everyone has the budgets or the bank accounts to strive for perfection, but the integration of passion and willingness to try, is displayed in any form of imagery and the storytelling, if anything, portrays just as strong!