LWLies Sixties Presents… Cléo from 5 to 7… | Little White Lies

LWLies Sixties

LWLies Six­ties Presents… Cléo from 5 to 7 reimagined

17 Jun 2021

Words by Adam Woodward

Stylish woman's face partially obscured by draped fabric, reflected in circular mirror, stark black-and-white tones.
Stylish woman's face partially obscured by draped fabric, reflected in circular mirror, stark black-and-white tones.
Evge­ny Todorov’s retro-styled homage to Agnès Varda’s Parisian sojourn is the lat­est poster in our part­ner­ship with 99designs by Vistaprint.

LWLies Six­ties is part of #99DaysOfDesign, from 99designs by Vistaprint. Check out all the posters in the series and dis­cov­er more at 99de​signs​.com

Agnès Var­da, the first lady of the French New Wave, cre­at­ed many icon­ic images dur­ing her near 70-year career – but her sec­ond fea­ture Cléo from 5 to 7 remains arguably her most allur­ing and endur­ing work.

Released in 1962 at the height of the avant-garde move­ment which would come to define French cin­e­ma for gen­er­a­tions to come, Varda’s film fol­lows a young woman named Cléo who nav­i­gates a bustling Paris as she anx­ious­ly awaits the results of a med­ical examination.

As part of 99 Days of Design, a cel­e­bra­tion of the pow­er of design from 99designs by Vistaprint, we com­mis­sioned Sofia-based street artist, illus­tra­tor and design­er Evge­ny Todor­ov to rein­ter­pret Varda’s fem­i­nist mas­ter­piece in the form of an alter­nate poster.

I real­ly enjoy the film and the art of Agnès Var­da,” says Todor­ov. For this poster I want­ed to cap­ture the emo­tion­al lead char­ac­ter, as this is the main sub­ject of the movie – the pret­ty but wor­ried face of Cléo. Even if you haven’t watched it, you’ll be curi­ous about who the per­son behind that face is. I thought of it almost like a logo.”

Monochrome poster featuring abstracted portrait with stylised eye and text "Cléo from 5 to 7" and "A film by Agnès Varda".

He con­tin­ues, giv­ing insight into his cre­ative process: The design process was real­ly enjoy­able. I watched the movie a few times and I book­marked all the scenes I found inter­est­ing. I was look­ing for the moments that I felt I want­ed to put in a frame. After that, I start­ed sketch­ing the design ideas based on the screen­shots I already made.

Some ele­ments had to be added or removed to make the com­po­si­tion com­plete. The idea was to stay close to the cin­e­mato­graph­ic look of the movie. In the end, I fin­ished the design in Pho­to­Shop and pol­ished it with effects and colour cor­rec­tions, adding tex­tures to make it look vin­tage and cool.”

Check out all six LWLies Six­ties posters and dis­cov­er more about 99designs by Vistaprint at 99de​signs​.com

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