New Director: Lucie Beecham

When approaching the promo for her sister’s furry fashion brand, Charlotte Simone, new director Lucie Beecham threw the rulebook out the window. Adding a playful twist to the classic West Coast rap videos of the 90s, she replaced gun-toting gangsters and Dom Pérignon pyramids with three elderly English women stealing the show on the streets of London.

“My thought was that Sean Combs in a T-shirt and jeans is still Sean Combs,” explains Beecham, “but when he puts on that floor-length fur coat he transforms into P. Diddy. That’s the effect I feel a Charlotte Simone scarf has: you put it on and transform into the gangsta version of yourself.”

The video enforces the skewed hip-hop parody theme with towers of tea and stilettos slung over telephone lines. The leading ladies are presented as empowered mascots of self-expression and style as they get up to no good. Having worked in fashion as an art director prior to her directing debut, the props and casting process came as a welcome treat for Beecham. “I never knew I was going to get into film,” she reflects. “It’s something that happened quite naturally. My ideas expanded to something that I couldn’t do justice to in a still image so I started to film them with the help of friends. The fact that I could create my own world with its own rules excited me so much and now I’m hooked!”

The world she created over the two-day shoot for Charlotte Simone is a fun and infectious one that challenges the conventions of the fashion industry. “I don’t consider Charlotte’s brand as one that has to stick to the rules and I think our leading ladies had exactly the right attitude and swagger we needed,” she muses.

“The girls thrived on the concept. They are vibrant women and so happy to be involved in a campaign that didn’t see them playing the preconceived notion of what it is to be an older lady – the granny in the knitted cardigan. We were looking for ladies who oozed confidence, attitude and were willing to give us an OTT performance.”

According to Beecham the shoot “was a real collaboration. Charlotte’s product is beautiful, Kyle De’volle styled it in a way that really caught your eye and Lisa Turnbull at Biscuit created amazing production value.” Though Biscuit Filmworks UK produced this film, Beecham is currently unsigned.

Since the hip-hop granny shoot, she’s directed a promo for Made In Chelsea star Rosie Fortescue’s latest jewellery line and has another fashion film for a new shoe brand in the works.

She says she finds inspiration for her filmmaking from all around – from movies, music and food, to the characters she meets. “It’s hard to say where I get my inspiration from as it comes at very weird and irregular times… I think it mostly comes when I’m completely zoned out, so if I’m on a walk or right before I go to sleep, I think that’s the time I let my mind wander 100 per cent free.”