The first in a series of collaborations with Vriens provides a fresh context for the iconic menswear brand.
“You’re from Europe, you’re from Europe”, Matthias Vriens recalls hearing shouted at him when he first moved to L.A. He was wearing a shirt and jacket in a city where “People can go for weeks without wearing anything else but sportswear (and very little of it…)”. In his new venture, Brief Stories, Vriens – once Creative Director at Giorgio Armani and Editor of Dutch Magazine – achieves harmony between the Angelino “culture of men in their underwear” and his European roots.
Launching in Paris on Wednesday, June 19th, Brief Stories is a collaboration between Vriens and menswear brand Ron Dorff. In the book’s introduction, written by Vogue editor and New York Times contributor William Norwich, Vriens explains that the project is “a new vocabulary for Ron Dorff.” Whereas the brand has historically taken “a rather 90s approach to the male physique,” he tells Mission, he favors a “more in-your-face, direct” method.
This vocabulary, then, whilst a new context for the brand, is unsurprising for the photographer, who Norwich notes was “an early pioneer of gender fluidity, sexual positivity, and street style.” Brief Stories is sensual and provocative, placing French-Swedish designs in the sun-scorched and salacious streets of Southern California. Vriens defies anyone who calls his work “homoerotic”, though. He believes the term was “created to box things in, [to] discriminate.” Instead, he says his “approach to photographing men comes from an emotion, a desire to portray men as approachable, sensual, desirable and lustful at times.” He prefers his own phrase, “mensexuality”, to encapsulate the free and fluid eye with which he captures his subjects.
“I begin with the person in front of me” and “an atmosphere of comfort”.
Next, this lens will turn on Paris, where Vriens and Ron Dorff plan to undertake another installment of Brief Stories: “I envision guys running through the Tuileries in front of the Louvre, sunning along the Seine and shopping the markets carrying crisp baguettes”. Though a departure from the “body culture” of L.A, Paris provides a new context to explore and, Vriens suggests to Mission, plenty of opportunity for double entendre.
Vriens’ playful discussion of the project is in accordance with the book itself, he heralds as “a celebration of the gorgeous men, friends, neighbors, lovers that I’m lucky enough to have around me.” This sense of freedom reflects the creative license that Claus Lindorff, CEO of Ron Dorff, provided. Vriens shares with Mission that he prefers to work without mood boards, which he suggests can lead to an end result which resembles “pictures from the internet”. For Brief Stories, he “didn’t show [Lindorff] anything until I was done with it all”. Instead, he explains, “I begin with the person in front of me” and “an atmosphere of comfort”. This celebration of expression and intimacy is also evident in Mission’s latest issue, for which Vriens photographed the story ‘About A Girl’.
The launch of the first Brief Stories, coinciding with Men’s Fashion Week, will be held at independent bookshop and publishing house Ofr Paris. There will be an accompanying exhibition from 6-8pm.
All images courtesy of Matthias Vriens.
