For travelers to and fro…
Do not be afraid of what you return to, for you have changed in those moments, and nights away.
When I first met Dru Bumesi, I had no idea we would one day create together. Some encounters arrive quietly, almost incidentally, before revealing themselves later as the beginning of something far more formative.
Mona was born from an alignment based less on planning than through recognition.
With fashion, I’ve always been interested less as a spectacle and more a language. Beyond hype, silhouettes, and colorways, style carries memory, tension, resistance, and actuality. A wardrobe tells stories before a wearer speaks. It exposes both fantasy and function; the practical and aspirational; who we are, and who we want to be.
This became crucial to my central ask in developing Mona, a fashion film that encourages one to examine tangible needs, movement, and what it means to be adrift; unmoored; the uneasy process of coming back changed to a place drastically different than when you left it.
When Dru first shared Mona’s framework, a few references stood out, the first being Mona’s emotional anchor: Agnes Varda’s Vagabond.
Crew & Contributors
Director: Adrean Viaud
Producers: Dru Blemenshied (BUMESI), Adrean Viaud (AUBORD)
Writer: Dru Blumenshied
Creative Direction / Styling: BUMESI
1st AC: Hunter Dane
Second Unit: Natalie Hong
PA: Koby Kern
Styling, Makeup Artists: Dru Blumenshied
Cast (Lead Characters)
Model 1: City — Anna Wapman
Model 2: Seaside — Jia Pham
Model 3: Seaside — Dru Blumenshied
Location: San Francisco + Mendocino + Davenport, California
Soundtrack
- Ennio Morricone — Matto, caldo, soldi, morto…girotondo
