Erin McClain is a fashion designer and seamstress based in Amsterdam. Her work lives at the intersection of fashion and storytelling — clothing that belongs in film. She started as a student of video at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, before switching to the fashion department as she gradually realized her attention had always been on what her characters wore. Erin’s pieces evoke a feeling of nostalgia, as if they belong to a story that you know yet it cannot be clearly placed. This tension between recognition and ambiguity shapes her practice, from the way her work is constructed to the way it's captured.
Njaay Mame Saliou Assile is a writer, director, and poet whose work pulls at the stranger edges of narrative.
“I lie, and I lie, and I lie, I will tell you a symphony of lies, and I will call it a
story.” Njaay Mame Saliou Assile’s (Dutch)(1997) work is poetic. He often asks
himself, how can I make it more simple? This way he is able to tell complex
stories. Using highly original language that is always with its feet firmly planted
in the ground. He refrains from the use of complex words, because the simple
ones are hard enough. But in the simple, he lets you dream. Of stories and
worlds that aren’t really there. His movies have a painterly visual language. And
in his writing he will build tension, and then just leaves you wondering. his
printers talk. And his ultimate goal is to make you forget your feet.
Together, the three of us share a sensibility: that clothing and composition carries meaning even in the absence of spoken words, and that the right landscape can make a story feel inevitable.
We have filmed across three continents — on the rim of a Hawaiian volcano, in a valley of dead trees nestled between the sand dunes of Namibia, and across the reclaimed lowlands of the Netherlands. The locations are never incidental. We choose places that feel charged, where the land itself seems to have something to say.
Each project begins somewhere between Saliou's narrative instincts, Erin's designs, and my camera. Not every collaboration has resulted in a short film; some live as photographs, others as moving image without resolution. On this page you can explore these visuals.
Credits:
Director: Njaay Mame Saliou Assile
Fashion designer: Erin McClain
Cinematographer: Liam McClain
Editor: Liam McClain and Njaay Mame Saliou Assile
Music: Erin McClain & Njaay Mame Saliou Assile
Colorist: Liam McClain
