Later bloomerism? Arrested development? In any case, Kraftwerk’s 1980 “Das Model” video (the German version) came into my life almost 45 years after its release. Credit goes to Dylan Jones, who wrote a 688-page tome on the New Romantic movement, Sweet Dreams, that I finally braved, and completed, after being intimidated by its size for two years. This oral history with informative asides was definitely worth the wait. Among the takeaways, for me, was that many, many roads lead back to Kraftwerk, the pioneering German electronic/techno quartet (from whom Hedi Slimane favorites Franz Ferdinand took many cues). Anyhow, I turned from the page to YouTube to investigate further and was tickled by the runway references in this music video.
Kraftwerk: “Das Model”
It was Andy Warhol who said “I want to be a machine,” but Kraftwerk who came closest to realizing his dream. For their hit “Das Model,” they make robotic movements to machine-made music while looking like ’30s shop-window mannequins and singing about a fashion model who is “looking good” and drinking champagne.
Live clips are spliced with black-and-white clips of ’50s-era photographic shoots and runways. The codified uniformity of the catwalk format, the band singing of the heroine “playing her game,” and the artificiality of the models’ movements—not to mention their constructed silhouettes (a nod to Christian Dior)—create a parallel to Kraftwerk’s artifice. This song, which had considerable success, was written by the band members’ friend, Emil Schult, who was dating a model at the time. The profession would soon be revolutionized by the supermodels who banished anonymity in favor of personality, and who felt free to play with stereotypes and poses that belonged to another time, as do those in this video.
