Rosario Dawson’s single spoken line at the end of Jesse Boykins III’s anticipated video for “Earth Girls,” almost didn’t happen. Dawson was stuck in two hours of traffic trying to make it to set, and the crew kept pushing Boykins to just call it a day. But once she arrived, yelling, “I made it! I made it!,” it inspired Boykins to come up with the line on the spot: “We found you, we’re so happy you’re here.”
Dawson had been a fan of Boykins for years, and was one of his top choices to star in the fashionable video. Director Christine Yuan captures a number of women in their natural states, whether brushing their hair in the mirror, laying in bed, or dancing alone in their room, but the clothes are certainly a bit more elevated, from baby blue suit vests to a delicate recycled plastic bag dress. Boykins sports some serious looks, too, like a robe from Kazakhstan that was gifted to him and some West African printed pants. “I was trying to build this world, like if Tim Burton and Wes Anderson was a hybrid and they did a line, what would it look like? I was always looking at it from a very cinematic approach,” he says.
And while the outfits are certainly that, Boykins’s concept for the video runs deeper than style alone. “I’m really into surreal realism,” he explains. “I love the fashion world, but sometimes there isn’t any reality in the fashion world. I was finding a way to hybrid the two and bring them together.” This led to the idea of a homeless man searching for his frequency, which the women in the video eventually manifest for him through their own ritual. “I love the talk about love, frequency, manifesting, and connecting to each other and being generous with each other,” Dawson says. “It’s a really beautiful visual expression of [Jesse’s] music.” Watch the supernatural yet down-to-earth new video above.
via VOGUE
