Google asked the LP1 singer to make her #throughglass advert no less than three times
It's been a good year for FKA twigs. Her debut record LP1 came out on Young Turks, she hit the cover of Dazed, collaborated with artists like Arca and Jesse Kanda and worked with one of the biggest companies in the world: Google.
But the collaboration between twigs and Google Glass turned heads even when it hit the internet in October. Twigs directed #throughglass and starred in it, voguing alongside krumpers and even giving a nod to Dominant, the leader of her fave dance crew Wet Wipez.
During a talk at the EDITION hotel as part of Miami Art Basel, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist asked her how the partnership came about. Here's what she said, as reported by Complex.
"Google approached me, and they asked me to make this advert for Google Glass. My first reaction was 'no'. I was like, 'Why would I do that? That's ridiculous', And then they asked again, but then I still said, "No, stop hitting me up... this is awkward'. And then they asked again, and I was like 'Okay, maybe I'm setting barriers for myself, because I'm sitting here, living in East London, signed to a cool label, Young Turks, with all my cool friends wearing cool clothes, and maybe I just need to branch out of that and work with a corporation – a company that's essentially one of the biggest organizations in the world.'"
After meeting Google in Los Angeles and trying out Glass, she immediately came up with the idea for the video and thought: "Okay, I guess that's a good sign." She agreed to do the advert, but only on the condition that the company didn't change anything – which Google agreed to.
"They were great to work with," twigs said. "They let me do whatever I wanted to do, and I think that it was a great collaboration, because we met each other half-way, and that's what a collaboration should be."
As for the concept behind the video? "It was me putting a full stop on a chapter of my life," she said. "I had all the little mini-mes who had been wearing all of the things that I'd worn over the past two years at photo shoots, like the Jean Paul Gaultier jumpsuit or the jewelry, the chokers... It was me acknowledging to myself how far I'd come and putting a full stop on that, and saying, "Okay, it's time for me to move on, because I want to be bigger than a style or a certain way of being".
She added: "It was also me playing on the way I know people see me. Sometimes, I'll be walking down the street, and people will be like, "I didn't realize you were real! I thought you were just this thing on the computer..." I read before that when I speak in my gigs, people say it's disappointing, because I'm a human... I'm just a girl, a woman I guess now, but I wanted to be able to play on that and then put a full stop on that through working with an amazing company."
Watch #throughglass below:
(h/t Complex)