New Director: Thalia de Jong

Move over, Gigi Hadid; time’s up, Cara Delevingne. Fashion moves fast, and human models, it seems, are no longer in vogue. They might be blessed with cut-glass cheekbones, but even the swishiest-haired of supers can’t compete with the luscious locks of a prize-winning guinea pig.

The champion cavy in question, Golden Boy, is the star of Dutch director Thalia de Jong’s eponymous film, a two-minute short that depicts the critter’s elaborate grooming routine in the style of a high-end beauty tutorial. As he poses on a lazy Susan, his fur is unclipped, fluffed up, blow-dried, parted down the middle and combed out by a pair of disembodied hands, while elevator jazz plays in the background. It’s as absurd as it sounds – yet oddly compelling.

According to de Jong, that’s precisely the point. “I liked the thought of infiltrating the fashion film scene with a little silliness,” she explains. “I love the genre, but I do get tired looking at all those melancholic models in slow-mo. Fashion is so much more than that!”

Having premiered on NOWNESS, Golden Boy has been shortlisted and awarded at several international fashion film festivals this year, including New York and Berlin: quite an achievement for a film without a single piece of fashion. Can it truly be classed as a fashion film? De Jong says the genre is as much about the aesthetic as the product: “I like how unapologetically stylised fashion is and I apply the same attention to detail to my films.”

De Jong got into directing after studying design at Eindhoven’s Design Academy. “I quickly discovered that I had little interest in creating yet another chair, but I loved being able to tell stories with images, so I almost became a graphic designer,” she explains. During an exchange at an art school in Berlin, she discovered film, and the rest is history. “Having the possibility to transform a story through time is amazing. So even though my films are quite static, the timing makes them exciting, funny, or unexpected.”

Golden Boy was inspired by de Jong’s “weird obsession with show animals. I love scrolling for images of perfectly groomed pets on the web. I actually have a list of all kinds of outrageous animals that I want to film one day and the time just felt right for a film with a long-haired guinea pig.”

The production process demanded detailed preparation – not only from an aesthetic standpoint, since all the colours had to match and the props look impeccable – but also because they were limited to an hour’s filming due to animal welfare concerns. A certain degree of flexibility was also key. “Normally I like my films to be exact copies of my storyboards, but since I was filming an animal and not an object, I had to count on some things not going exactly as I planned.” They say you should never work with children or animals, but de Jong insists that her star was very well behaved during the shoot, with “just a few squeaky noises towards the end”.  

Drawing her inspiration from childhood haunts – “funfairs, candy shops, toy stores, party stores and pet stores” – de Jong is developing a distinctive directing style she describes as “perfected quirkiness: simple and far too sugary”. And there are more sweet treats to come: having directed a TV spot for Dutch lifestyle brand HEMA, she’s currently working on another animal-themed beauty concept, “comparing hairstyles to the extravagant plumage of birds”.