How are the doubts and tests that you were put through expressed in the film?
Gabi: Throughout the film—nonstop. What’s nice about it is that it really shows those obstacles, but it also shows the lightheartedness, the consistency, the persistence, and the determination. There’s both sides, which is nice because it makes the film more balanced.
Sean: Part of what I am really grateful for with Threeasfour is that they were so open to being vulnerable and to being filmed over a long period of time, where a lot of difficult things happened. It’s not a fluff piece. It really shows the struggle that they went through. I hope that people see the struggle and the fights and [Threeasfour] overcoming their difficulties through perseverance and friendship. That love is something that will be inspiring to other artists.
Another thing that I find inspiring is that in working as a collective, you demonstrate that fashion is a collective practice, which is often overlooked in the current “star system.”
Gabi: That’s super important for us, that’s the reason we are three us four. We made a point about this from the beginning. As four comes from my last name, the reason for it is immigration. I had to get everybody’s papers. So we named the company after the family that had papers already, because we had citizenship, but I’m not American, I’m an immigrant as well.
Adi: Asfour means ‘a bird’ in Arabic. Since we were four people, we decided to take his last name and split the ‘as’ and ‘four.’ It became Asfour, and it made sense because we were four. When Kai left, people started to call us three, and then we decided to change it to three as four.
Can you describe the look and feel of the film?
Sean: I started making the film with Brian Gonzalez. He’s a very good friend, and he had shot some music videos for me, so I was a huge fan of his eye. Brian is the DP; he did the photography and also wound up co-directing with me. What we were hoping for is a timeless, classic elegance, not too modern. Something that resembled a Maysles film from the ’70s, very simple, that allowed the subjects to speak and be what they are, as opposed to using a lot of flashy techniques to project an idea onto the viewer.
We wanted to make it almost like a verité film and just shoot them and just see them and allow them to be who they are. And it’s an older school type of filmmaking, but that was the idea.
Backstage fitting of model Zen Sevastyanova.
Photo: Elisabet Davidsdottir / Courtesy of Opinicus Pictures/Assembly Releasing
