DENIM TEARS SCORES ITS FRAGRANCE FILM WITH FRANK OCEAN

Denim Tears scores its first fragrance film with a decade old Frank Ocean deep cut. P3ezy stands in a wet cotton field outside Harlem, Georgia while Wither plays over the shot, the Atlanta rapper's second Denim Tears campaign in three weeks. The choice fits a brand built on ancestry, but it also means Comme des Garcons Parfums borrowed atmosphere instead of commissioning an original score. Tears releases Friday, September 18 at 11 AM EST, online at DENIMTEARSDOTCOM and in person at African Diaspora Goods in Soho and the brand's Lenox Square residency in Atlanta.

P3ezy Returns for a Second Campaign in Three Weeks

P3ezy fronted Denim Tears' Drop Two lookbook on September 4, sharing frame space with the label's Billionaire Boys Club collaboration inside its Andre Leon Talley tribute season. Three weeks later he is back, cast as one of two lead characters in the Tears fragrance film alongside newcomer Reginald Helms Jr.

Drop Two's Billionaire Boys Club capsule put P3ezy in Pan African striping inside a New York lookbook. The fragrance film moves him outdoors, into the cotton fields the scent is named for, working with a stylist and a hand printing team instead of a runway crew. Denim Tears has now built two separate campaigns around him inside one month, a repeat casting choice the label has not made this often with any other face since Drop One opened the Talley season on August 14.

P3ezy came up in fashion and modeling before he put out music, and his orbit around Playboi Carti's camp has drawn its own attention this year. Denim Tears is not borrowing a stranger's face for reach; it is building a second consecutive campaign around someone already fluent in the brand's own visual language, which is a different bet than the one off celebrity cameo most labels make.

Wither Predates the Fragrance by a Decade

Wither is track ten on Frank Ocean's 2016 visual album Endless, built around a guitar part from Alex G and background vocals from Jazmine Sullivan. Denim Tears did not commission a new score for Tears; the campaign licenses a decade old deep cut instead.

Maison Margiela's own fashion short leaned on a score built for that film alone. Denim Tears went the other direction, letting a song most listeners know from a specific era of Ocean's catalog carry a scent about cotton fields and inherited memory. The pairing puts a music credit most brand campaigns do not bother chasing next to a perfumer's own composition. Paul Guerlain built Tears around galbanum and sage before settling into vetiver, hay and musk.

Fashion campaigns license current singles far more often than deep cuts, because a deep cut asks the viewer to already know the catalog. Wither carries no chorus built for a trailer; it is a slow, guitar led track about longevity, which reads less like a soundtrack pick and more like Emory scoring the film the way he would build a playlist for himself.

Sixteen Names Are Credited on One Fragrance Film

Denim Tears listed sixteen people across the Tears campaign credits, more than most of its apparel drops carry. Dexter Navy directed and shot the film with cinematographer Andre Chemetoff, while Sylvain Canaux handled the color grade and Henry Gilchrist mixed sound at Saint Louis, the post house crediting the final cut.

Stylist Rita Zed and hand printer Chris Cooke Hand Prints worked the wardrobe on set, local producer Jeff Squared ran production in Georgia, and photo retoucher Luke Bird finished the stills. Production company 92am, with Maeva Tenneroni and Mathilde Carlotti, and art direction from CB Sugar and J Geigel round out the list. Tears retails for 180 dollars in a 50 milliliter bottle, releasing through Comme des Garcons Parfums stores worldwide alongside Denim Tears' own doors.

Tears is Denim Tears' fourth new category this year, after leather bags in June and a Topps trading card parallel in August. P3ezy is the connective tissue between the last two projects, Drop Two on September 4 and this film, while Wither gives the campaign something most fragrance ads do not carry: a decade old song instead of a commissioned score. Early, not overrated. The categories keep expanding faster than the casting pool does.