Titled Banned Commercials (the conceit being that these images are too hot for TV), Kovin’s lookbook created by director Jesse McGowan and cinematographer Jason Banker is a series of thirty-second snippets, each featuring surreal, somewhat threatening camera movements, models fleeing from God-knows-what, digital chicanery, and pulsatinging music. If most video lookbooks are tepid romances, these are miniature horror flicks that veer more toward Matthew Barney territory than Bernardo Bertolucci. If that doesn’t sound all that palatable, remember that the main job of any commercial work — be it a car ad or fashion lookbook — is to grab and hold the viewer’s attention. Kovin and McGowan and their somewhat troubled models have done just that, hopefully providing a different look into what is increasingly becoming a central medium for fashion.

