Ahlem Manai-Platt is bringing a new vision to her namesake eyewear line with her film debut. This season, the designer opted to showcase her designs with a film created in collaboration with her husband, filmmaker Bo Platt.
“This idea has been circling in my head for a while,” Manai-Platt said of the move from still photographic campaign to something more cinematic. “I love the idea of revealing snippets of my brand’s ideology and aesthetic through short stories. I’ve done that previously through a series of pictures, but I have been eager to leap into film. The experience was made even better by the fact that I got to collaborate with my husband.”
Set in Malibu, the film follows a man and a woman playing a game of ‘cat and mouse,’ against the backdrop of a modern home designed by one of Manai-Platt’s favored architects, Michael Sant. The sharp black-and-white film features a score by Kit Sebastian.
“I wanted to create something that was both elegant and playful, vulnerable and confident, stylish and intellectual, a little bit French because that’s who Ahlem is, but also expressly modern Los Angeles because that’s what our current life is,” said Platt, who sought to create something that embodied her brand, Ahlem, and the woman behind it.
