Liz Brennan "Sweater Song" video shoot

I had such a blast this past weekend with singer/songwriter Liz Brennan and 15 of her closest friends, styling the music video for her next single “Sweater Song”.

The initial meeting with her manager Emiko Carlin Pearce & director Tim Skousen (Leon, Awful Normal & 1^st asst director for Napoleon Dynamite), told me this was going to be at least a little bizarre and a lot improvised.   Cool!!

We had very little time to get this all together.  She had nothing to wear, a limited budget and the shoot was in less than a week. Normally I’d do look books & a pre shop, but there was no time to fully flesh that out.  We exchanged some ideas via email and jumped right in.  We spent 3 long days together and I focused on simultaneously getting to know her and her personal style, along with creating & finding pieces for the very specific costuming required for the shoot. 

I quickly discovered that Liz doesn’t want to just look like everyone.  In fact, she doesn’t want to look like anyone else. 

In addition, she is one of those artistically genius people that is constantly spewing ideas. I mean, it’s non-stop.  Some of what she comes up with is so “out there”, I had to rein it in because there just wasn’t time or budget to work it out.  But sometimes, she said something that was so interesting, we HAD to find a way to do it!!

So the challenge was to create these specific costumes for the story line, but make them look as if they were something Liz would normally wear and have her own stamp on them.  That was the only way she was going to feel comfortable and for her performance to look “real” in the video.  Considering Liz’s heroes & style icons are Janis Joplin and Stevie Nicks, I had my work cut out for me.   We hit flea markets, downtown boutiques & high end department stores until we had just the right pieces. (Thankfully for the budget, the $3000 shoes at Bergdorf’s didn’t come in her size!)

Now as you can imagine, this was not going to be just any ordinary music video.  This was a full concept, time warp, Scooby-Doo-like crazy antics & suspense filled, fun fest, complete with dancing, poker, puppies on the loose and toasted marshmallows. 

Example of Scooby Doo antics

The video was shot at Liz's family's property in the Catskills, upstate, NY.  We shot and all stayed in a giant, old farm house, decorated with the most epic, 60’s & 70’s wallpaper I’ve ever seen…and I remember the 70’s! 

Liz and some epic wallpaper!

Everyone arrived the night before the shoot and gathered in the living room to see what was brought to wear.  The guidelines were to dress for a low key house party in the 60’s but be fashionable and try to work in a sweater.  A couple of other characters would be dressed from other eras. The logic? You’ll have to see it in the final cut, I’m not giving it away!  Liz’s friends were definitely up for the challenge and brought the cutest and funniest stuff.  My role wasn’t really to style them, but I couldn’t help myself, I jumped in to tweak some of the outfits and even added some of my own accessories.

Helayna: Houndstooth mini dress with hot pink stockings, gold slingback shoes & purple scarf.

Jinea:  In Liz's custom made, crochet mohair dress.  I pinned it up into a mini skirt length, paired with light pink stockings, boots & a scarf for her hair

Carolyn: Love the kitchy kitten sweater dress with the furry boots!

Touching up Hayley

For Hayley's 70's look I gave her hair a little winged curl, brightened the eye shadow & glossed up the lips

The disco diva is on!

Check him out!  Flashy, turquoise, Miami Vice meets MC Hammer dropped crotch suit.  I ironed his hair into a "Flock of Seagulls" do, which gave it the final 80's touch.  He was ready to pop & lock!

I had nothing to do with Ben's 90's outfit, but I just had to show it - rad, boyyyyzzzz!!!

And then there was LIZ…

Mod Girl: Too cool for school

I really wanted her to stand out, as the star of the video, so bright colors & bold patterns were the way to go.  This Mod style dress (found in her closet!), paired with polka dot hose (from Kate Spade) and white go-go boots (that I had from an old Halloween costume), did the job perfectly.  Those sunglasses are an authentic find from the 60’s at Artists & Fleas in Chelsea Market and have different colored interchangeable lenses.  She’s going to wear those every day!

This is how the yellow lenses look.  Yes.  Just, yes.

I set her naturally curly hair in rollers to give it that full but ironed look, then teased the heck out of it and pinned it up at the crown, a la Brigette Bardot and Jane Fonda. 

8AM, Makeup Central. Not nearly caffeinated enough.

Priscilla Presley eat your heart out

I used a bright green eyeshadow on her lids & above the crease, heavy black liner with wings and thick, black false lashes to make her hazel eyes really pop with that 60’s model look.  Neutral but shimmery lips and a bit of cheek contouring made it look really authentic to the time, but still a hint of modern color, so her natural beauty came out!

Eye primer & a green eye pencil under the shadow really made the color pop!

After 18 hours of shooting the main part of the video, 3AM, beyond tired and borderline delirious, it was time to change Liz’s costume for the final scene - the future!  We pieced this outfit together from very different sources and styles: sequined leggings and mesh top by Reiss at Bloomingdales; caged hoop skirt (for under petticoats) and silver, crazy high platform boots from Gothic Renaissance.  The shrug is a custom piece made by designer Sohung, who was showing at Artists & Fleas.  It’s basically strategically sewn together zippers.  His whole line was so cool, I’m going to go back and get something for myself! 

And the "piece de resistance": the headpiece! We needed something to initially hide her identity, that she could remove, like an astronaut helmet.  But of course, Liz had to do it her own way. Inspired by a design I showed her from Ara Jo, we knew we had to run with this idea. But where to find anything like it? A stroke of luck, perhaps, led us to the wonderful folks at Abracadabra. They were able to custom create this for us in less than 2 days!  It’s made from corset boning, covered in satin material and lined with fine mesh.  It opens in the front with hook and eye closures, the shape molded to her head and neck and sits on her shoulders. To further mask her face, we lined the front of it with translucent paper and pointed a light into it from above, so it eerily glowed.

Even Space Women get lipstick smudgies

Balanced by the caged hoop skirt, painting her nails black & silver & adding heavy cuff bracelets (from my personal collection), she looked like Wonder Woman’s twisted sister.  Perfect!

This was originally supposed to be a space suit & astronaut helmet.  Liz had something else in mind...

Get a load of these boots

 To further contrast the happy, fun Mod girl, into this darker, futuristic character for the “big reveal”, I changed her eyeshadow to a dark, shimmery graphite color & lips to a black gloss, highlighted with silver.  I added a couple of body crystals over her eyebrows.  I didn’t add a lot of crystals, because the camera wasn’t really reading them…and frankly they take a million years to apply and everyone wanted to go to bed, lol!

I brushed out the teasing in her hair, then gave her spiral curls and partially pinned it up.  I wanted the curls to sit on top of her head with the headpiece on and fall into a wild style when she took it off. 

Yeah, this is what I look like at 4AM. :-/

We weren’t sure how Liz was going to move around in this outfit and those boots, but she was so into it, she did great!  It almost seemed to be perfectly natural for her.  There’s something about the basic elements of this look I think she might take into her “artist” look going forward.  Maybe she won’t wear the hoop skirt & boots every day…but something clicked…we shall see!!  Stay tuned!
I'm also proud to say that Liz's wardrobe was completely vegan/cruelty free!!
Contact me at www.itfactorimage.com for commercial styling, personal image consulting, lifestyle organization and more!

Here are a few more shots, for fun:

Why is Liz so enamored with that door?

What year is it, anyway?

uh oh, puppy had too much scotch...