Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta are no strangers to experimentation. For SS15, they sent models down a runway littered with lettuce. Some wobbled down it in double stacked trainers, others a little more stably with their legs painted to look like tube socks. For their new campaign video however, the pair have taken experimentation to the next level. 

Titled Roach, the film features a series of shots: the ocean (seen through a septum piercing), a cockcroach writhing around on its back, a man urinating in a field and a penis covered in smoked salmon. To create it, the designers have enlished two of their longtime collaborators German filmmaker Alexa Karolinski, who shot the film and hip-hop producer Dev Hynes, who scored it.

Instead of models, the video features fellow members of New York’s underground fashion gang: one third of Moses Gauntlett Cheng David Moses, artists John-Mercer Moore and Skye Chamberlain, and photographer Rob Kulisek. As well as Hynes’ soundtrack, the video footage is accompanied by a poetry reading from artist Nora Slade. This poem (see below) was writted by the designers themselves. 

One night I laid in bed and listened to you cry on the other side of the wall as you watched an entire season of Mad Men until the sun came up

Your cursor on the white brick wall

It was like living on an island

The cars stuck in traffic in the near distance of the onramp

Loosing sight of a private life

You painted your bedroom with like a green screen with the hope of being elsewhere

Some weeks we wouldn't leave the house

Watching the neighbours chihuahua out the window mount a fallen branch of pine in crow pose wondering:

“What does it feel like to wake up as him?”

ROACH from alexa karolinski on Vimeo.