video visionaries
by nathan cooper

04.99

today's music videos are as fashion-forward as the best runway shows. nathan cooper meets four top directors who match substance with style.

video may have killed the radio star, but it has done loads for fashion. witness the influence of mtv: ravers scan bjork's latest looks, goths track marilyn manson's full-frontal attitude. and fly girls spy mariah's gucci stilettos as she skips along to her pop-opera nursery rhymes.

right in step with demographic shifts in the channel's fickle audience, the directors of mtv's videos mix cutting-edge camera work, seven-figure budgets, and far-out references to establish themselves as some of the most fashionable—if not always critically acclaimed—artists around. hype williams, mark romanek, and the husband-and-wife team of jonathan dayton and valerie faris are at the top of this high-style technicolor field.

if your name is hype, you know fashion. growing up in what he calls an "extremely urban" part of queens, hype williams remembers being the only person in the neighborhood who even knew what vogue was, much less spoke the rarefield language of runway style. williams was mesmerized by the glamour of lancome ads and lavish couture shoots from early on. but, says the 30-year-old music-video director, "i couldn't see how to fit myself into that world." rather than sign up for sewing lessons, williams got into film and made music video his method for injecting the high-voltage fashion he loved into a world much closer to home: the hip-hop and r&b industry. says williams, "when i got involved, rap videos didn't look like anything. back then nobody wanted to look at rappers, even if their songs were great. they had no face or image, so i wanted to give them a profile."

williams's videos, shot for a tightly knit web of artists including puff daddy, mase, and mary j. blige, are packed with the director's firecracker signatures: color more saturated than a versace printed silk shirt, robotic-but-sexy dancers in front of stylized explosions, and piles of cash, all short through a fish-eye lens. the look has come to be known as "ghetto fabulous." it's a lifestyle brand, as identifiable as the nike swoosh or the vuitton lv.

as a court videographer for a flourishing urban rap culture, williams plays michelangelo to puff daddy's medici. the videos are postcards from puffy land (all black, all luxe, all the time), addressed to supafly "kids"—the very same kids tommy, calvin, and ralph vie to dress in their bread-and-butter jeans lines. "i'm 30, but i've got to keep in with what fifteen-year-olds are doing," says williams. "whatever continent you're on, the cool kids have the urban look. i mean, these kids are religious about it."

dodging the hype, mark romanek plays the reclusive artiste—the tortured genius who shuns the press and lets his work do the talking. fortunately for him, romanek's work roars. a romanek video is a study in provocative hipness. from the cyber ashram he devised for madonna's "bedtime story" (which moma later acquired for its film and video collection), replete with whirling dervishes and chrome hologram cubes, to the computer-generated romper room he concocted for janet and michael jackson's high-speed duet "scream," romanek relentlessly pushes the visual envelope.

the chicago native has a lot in common with fashion's prodigal firestarter, alexander mcqueen. the two troublemakers' feisty tactics often test the establishment's boundaries. two noted offenses: the press slapped mcqueen's wrist for reportedly weaving human hair into outfits for his infamous "mad scientist" givenchy show in 1997, and mtv's censors pulled so many images (monkeys writhing on crucifixes and a graphic medical photograph from the 1800s) from romanek's murky and carnal nine inch nails clip "closer" that he erased his name from the credits.

life on the far side is also one of the specialties of jonathan dayton and valerie faris. the pair often mine their shared experiences as teenagers in california for their artistic videos. the smashing pumpkins' "1979"—full of kids cruising around suburbia with arched eyebrows—is the apotheosis of the duo's take on teen spirit. faris says, "'1979' was a very personal video about the things we've gone through. things that relate to us."dayton and faris began their careers with their groundbreaking show the cutting edge in mtv's early days and have been living up to the show's name with a string of award-winning videos ever since. standouts include the hockneyesque "pets" for porno for pyros, and a madcap and send-up of georges melies's 1902 silent film a trip to the moon for the smashing pumpkins' "tonight, tonight."

fashion's crush on video often reaches its most fevered pitch when designers and print photographers get into the act. alexander mcqueen sent bjork into a faux jungle for "alarm call," the designer's directorial debut, and jean paul gaultier has whipped up costumes for a bevy of videos, including madonna's "frozen" and "nothing really matters". photographers ellen von unwerth, david lachapelle, jean baptiste mondino, and herb ritts all have dabbled with the moving image, directing videos with design-savvy flair. as more and more style mavens straddle the gap between fashion and music, tune in to watch music videos soar to new and glamorous heights.

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