Harmony Korine X GUCCI Lookbook Gets Reworked Physical Release

We’ve been fans of Harmony Korine for an incredibly long time.  Like many, he first hit my radar as the 19-year-old screenwriter behind the controversial 1995 Larry Clark film, KIDS.  However, It was his directorial debut, 2 years later, that truly won me over.  Gummo is a stark, scattered, and affecting film, overflowing with as many beautiful moments, as the undeniably uncomfortable ones.  Set in Xenia, Ohio — a small Midwestern town devastated by a hurricane that no one put much effort into rebuilding — the film felt simultaneously unnerving and familiar.  The aesthetic was gritty, with fine details that could feel arbitrary yet perfect, like the bacon randomly scotch-taped to tile behind a wiry boy eating spaghetti in a murky bathtub.  KIDS was raw, but it was still presented in a way that allowed mainstream America to absorb it enough so that they knew what they were reacting to.  At least people watched KIDS.  They walked out of Gummo.  Sure KIDS was raw, but, when left entirely to his own devices, Korine‘s own work wasn’t simply more so; it was more on several different levels.

In promotion for Gummo, the filmmaker made his second of three now-infamous appearances on The Late Show With David Letterman, before he was eventually banned from the program for life.  During that interview, he stated, “I think [with ]every movie, there needs to be a beginning, middle, and end, but just not in that order.”  He also spoke of a “novel” that we was writing titled, A Crackup At The Race Riots, of which he claimed the story would be based in Florida and involve “the blacks” being “run” by MC Hammer, while the leader of “the whites” would be Vanilla Ice.  He added that his intention with the book was “to write The Great American Choose Your Own Adventure Novel.”  When Crackup did get printed in 1998, it was less of a novel and more of a series of vignettes, half thoughts, one-liners, xeroxed photos, movie ideas, random musings, and suicide notes scattered over 175 pages.  At the end of the Letterman interview, he mentioned that he’d just done his first art show.  When asked if he painted, he confirmed that he did.

A number of people were surprised when the Meat Puppets shifted from the much noisier, more hardcore punk sound on their debut to the western tinged follow up, Meat Puppets II, but it’s been accurately expressed before, that, anyone who was really paying attention might have been able to foresee the potential for that evolution coming.  Likewise, Harmony pretty much laid out in full who he was and what he wanted to accomplish through his art, during that second Letterman interview.  The problem is that nobody tends to really listen, or take him seriously.  In fact, he even references knowing Snoop Dogg, who eventually appeared in his latest movie, The Beach Bum.  More than a filmmaker — at least in the typical sense — Korine chooses to operate outside of the claustrophobic limitations of modern cinema to reach beyond restrictions toward something more fluid and expansive.  What Harm cares more about than plot and rigid storylines are moments and feelings; the only things that many of us usually take away from a motion picture — or life, in general — anyway.  It makes sense that he approaches his other writing and visual art outlets in a very similar fashion.

For years, it seemed as if Harmony Korine wasn’t very active, as large gaps of time would pass by without a new film on the horizon.  The truth of the matter is that he remains active in projects that are often much more unorthodox and less widely promoted on a mainstream level.  His gallery shows of original work, alone have multiplied over the years.  Meanwhile, he’s worked on numerous collaborations, including musical projects involving such names as Bonnie Prince Billy and Brian DeGraw of Gang Gang Dance.  The collectors out there can tell you about the insane amounts that the books that he’s created with fellow visual artists like Christopher Wool and Dan Colen go for.  Then there are his collaborations with clothing brands like Vans and Supreme, in addition to the ad and the short film that he shot for Dior and Proenza Schouler, respectively.  His latest collaboration is actually part art book and part fashion collab.  Gucci tapped the director to photograph their Pre-Fall 2019 look book, which you can now pick up a version of in a limited edition physical format.  The best part is that, even when we’re dealing with a name as high end and iconic as Gucci, this project is still 100% Harmony.

The news about Korine photographing the look book came out back around December but, since I don’t read fashion news, I never had any idea about it.  The original images featured the models fully decked out in fantastical Gucci attire designed by the brand’s creative director, Alessandro Michele,  Meanwhile they were chomping on snacks in front of the backdrop of UNESCO World Heritage archeological sites of Ercolano and Pompei, in Italy’s Campania region.  A WWD.com article quotes a press release that has Korine expressing the following sentiments about the project.

“I am honored to present my collaboration with Gucci with this Art Book. Working with Alessandro Michele was such a great experience,” Korine said. “It was a chance to shoot in historic places such as the ancient towns of Ercolano and Pompei, which are so inspiring. The special atmosphere made it a unique experience.”

While the original lookbook photographs are admittedly stunning, the washed-out reworked imagery and fluorescent green elements in the physical book are much more aligned with Harmony‘s established handwritten scrawlings, weathered neon, and scotch-taped bacon aesthetic.

Gucci by Harmony Korine is a softcover 25.5cm x 19cm (approx 7.5″ x 10″) book with a slipcase.  It’s 370 pages and printed in a limited edition of only 1000 copies.  The price for this beast is £60, which means that it’s going to run you about 80 bucks USD, when it’s all said and done, not to mention the overseas shipping.  It’s currently available to order from Idea Now, and, as of the publishing of this post, it is definitely still available.

How long this has been available, though, I’m not sure.  I simply stumbled across some information about it, saw that it was scheduled to be dropping sometime in June, and then went on the hunt backwards to track it, hoping that it wasn’t already a faded memory that I was too late for… again.  As far as Harmony Korine‘s stuff goes, even the most hardcore fans/collectors out there that I know, still watch projects like this float right past them, remaining under the radar until they’re dealing with exorbitant markups on the secondary market.  Harmony Korine X Gucci?  As pricey as it might seem now, if you want this thing, you should probably scoop it up soon, while you can still find it for retail.

For a more thorough look into the release, you can link over to GUCCI.com, and check out a handful of preview images below.