The Denim Story of Ksenia Schneider for Vogue Italia is a moment full of power and grace, in which the model dances elegantly, experimenting different moves in the brand’s items, in an atmosphere that is at the same time classic and contemporary, bold and romantic. We met Edoardo Emanuele, that directed this video that is all about the close relationship that denim has with their owner’s life and soul, to know more about how this story was born and about his personal denim concept.

How is your relationship with denim and how do you think it translates into a visual story?
I’m surely having the longest love story of my life with denim. I have been wearing it since I was a child. I have so many pictures of me while I’m playing and posing with jeans and a denim jacket on. For me, wearing denim it’s not only a style choice but a life choice. It’s difficult to think of an outfit that is missing a denim piece: denim is something that gets into your soul and that accompanies you throughout the day. The key aspect is that whenever you’re wearing denim you can do whatever you want and be whoever you want to be. Denim has become part of who we are: we can play in it, pretending we are reinventing ourselves in it or simply state our nature with it.

How did you come up with the storyboard?
First, I started working on the Ksenia character – the fact that the model has ballet skills made it easy for her to experiment different moves and bring together the graceful rigour of ballet and the anarchy of an improvised solo.
Ksenia in this video is not only a dancer: She rediscovers her body, the feeling of being at ease with herself, even if She’s in an old Soviet submarine, a place that is not comfortable at all. Her dance is guided by the words of a poem that Ksenia learned when she started to attend the dance academy. The poem is about the close relationship between dancing and the clothes we are wearing, items that can make us feel free but that at the same time bring with them our past mistakes.

What kind of brand did you want to represent?
I represented Ksenia Schnaider, and surely the piece I liked the most are the jeans. These are flared pants with a very comfortable fit, and they highlight and accompany the model’s dance moves. The jeans made the images and the dance steps look very elegant, and with the slow-motion I could capture both the details of the jeans and the moves.

Do you have a favorite denim piece?
My favorite denim piece is an old shirt that I bought in London when I was 15. I wanted that shirt at all costs because it looked exactly the same to those often worn by Bob Marley on stage, and I was so fascinated by his iconic look that I started to wear it almost every day for a couple of years. Then, suddenly, that shirt disappeared from my closet. I thought my mum stole it during the night to hide it somewhere else, since She was probably tired of seeing me wearing it. But I was wrong. Years later I found it at the bottom of an old bag that I forgot about, and since then that shirt came back to my closet and, even if it doesn’t fit anymore, I’ll never throw it away.

What's the challenge of telling the story of an ingredient brand like ISKO denim?
The biggest challenge was to find an element that could connect the ingredient brand with the main concept of the story. I thought that if I could find the right way to picture the way that denim connects with our personality and with space and time, I could also communicate its relationship with the final product, in a powerful and relevant way.