To mark the launch of their new ’90s inspired collection, Fantastic, the eponymous fashion label led by British writer and model Alexa Chung—in a film directed by London-based photographer Jesse Jenkins—a dreamlike celebration of one of the decade’s biggest musical and cultural movements. Speaking about Britpop's connection with disenfranchised youth, the label’s creative director, Chung, explains, “In times of solitude, music transports us to places we never knew.” Wearing a mustard outfit inspired by pop icon Jarvis Cocker—and backed by a recitation of the work of punk poet John Cooper Clarke—the film’s dancing ingénue sheds his isolation and joins a gathering of glamorously glitzy youth. Jenkins, the film's director, speaks of their own relationship to this atmosphere: "I was born and raised on the seaside, 5000 miles away from England. It wasn’t Jarvis and fish and chips, rather pennywise and hot dog on a stick but I dreamed of the other side of the pond and the “seaside towns they forgot to close down”.
British-born Chung explains the inspiration behind the film: “I’m intrigued by that stage of youth where you’re caught in between teenagedom and adulthood. There’s a synergy between finding one’s place in the world, tentative expression, the joy of discovery, and what’s going on with our brand.
“Britpop largely inspired this collection,” she continues. “And that sort of ultra British experience of soggy chips and windswept beaches and old men’s pubs and disco revivals is a time and a place I wanted to revisit in this film.”