Thursday, August 30, 2018

You Need To See Teyana Taylor Dancing For Agent Provocateur

If you’ve been lacking hypnotic dancefloor inspiration since Teyana Taylor’s mesmerising appearance in Kanye West’s “Fade” music video, you are in luck. The body-popping queen of Flashdance routines is back, and this time she’s moving with Agent Provocateur.

It’s not the first time fashion has courted Taylor. Shortly after “Fade” broke the internet, Philipp Plein, The Blonds and GCDS enlisted the performer to bring her raw athleticism and fearless attitude to their spring/summer 2018 catwalks. Accordingly, Agent Provocateur has chosen Taylor to front its autumn/winter 2018 line of lingerie that women can rule the world in, aptly titled “The Power of the Provocateur”.

“The brand came to me in search of a strong talent, one who could not only be the face of the campaign, but also be involved in creating a new approach to female empowerment,” Taylor told Vogue ahead of the launch. “I felt like it could be an opportunity for me to represent different types of women with regards to lingerie.”

Shot and directed by Charlotte Wales, with make-up by Isamaya Ffrench (the brain behind Rihanna’s skinny brows on British Vogue’s September cover) and styling by Ursina Gysi, the campaign features Taylor dancing to Exile’s “I Want To Kiss You All Over”. Unlike the "Fade" routine, which was meticulously planned, Taylor had no choreographer for this project.


“Dance wasn’t the main agenda for the campaign,” Sarah Shotton, creative director of Agent Provocateur, informed us. “The brand is all about strong women, curves and healthy bodies that are sexually liberated and free – we wanted to create something that represents the confidence our underwear gives the wearer.”

Shotton describes Taylor as a “superhero woman”, but, for Taylor herself, being strong means “knowing who you are, and not allowing external forces to influence that”. As well as taking care of her family, launching her second album, K.T.S.E, filming a TV show and touring, she takes her position as a female in the spotlight seriously. “It’s the power of every woman to provoke cultural change. It’s not only about being feminine or sexy in the traditional sense, but for every woman to be strong in her sense of self, her point of view and her sensuality.”

The new collection was born out of Shotton’s personal thought process when she noticed a shift in society's values towards women at the end of 2018. “It really made me start thinking about the brand, what we represent and where we stand with this change,” she explained. “I remembered my own first encounter with Agent Provocateur in 1999 and how my first set of lingerie changed how I felt about my body. Underwear is like armour... a secret weapon."

The overriding message of the autumn/winter 2018 moodboard was attitude and "filthy elegance", but it's Taylor's own missive that perhaps sums up Agent Provocateur's core values best: “Women are so strong, we always carry a lot on our shoulders, but we’ve got this!”

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