Hanna Hanra 

The soundtrack to London fashion week: ‘There’s a girl running down the streets of Rome. She’s crying….’

Think fashion editors are frazzled this London Fashion Week? Spare a thought for writer and DJ Hanna Hanra, whose job involves negotiating the esoteric briefs and last-minute nerves of designers to create soundtracks for their fashion shows
  
  

Hanna Hanra (L)with the singer Robyn, DJing at The Gentlewoman issue launch party at the Oscar Wilde Bar at The Club at Hotel Cafe Royal on September 9, 2014
Hanna Hanra (L)with the singer Robyn, DJing at The Gentlewoman issue launch party at the Oscar Wilde Bar at The Club at Hotel Cafe Royal on September 9, 2014 Photograph: David M. Benett/Getty Images

Thanks to watching episodes of Absolutely Fabulous when I was younger, I thought that fashion show soundtracks were pumping house records cranked up to the max, accompanied by the syncopated screech of camera shutters capturing every moment. There might be screaming. There might be Naomi Campbell. There would definitely be air kissing. The first actual fashion show I saw shattered this illusion: Gareth Pugh’s graduate collection, soundtracked with Gary Glitter’s classic Rock N Roll Part 2.

Since then, I’ve worked on the music for many shows at London fashion week, from graduates showing for the first time in Fashion East to productions in the Tate Turbine Hall. Each one is completely different from the other. Some designers know exactly what they want: a handful of songs that work with the collection that they’ve been listening to and just really like. Others want to work through a list of suggestions with me, rocking up with a Spotify playlist and a bag of Haribo, fine tuning suggestions as we go. Sometimes I’ve been presented with a brief of who the designer visualises the girl walking down the catwalk as being. “She’s running through the streets of Rome. She’s crying. There has been a storm. She’s wearing a silk dress cut on the bias with no bra. She’s smoking a Gitane. She greets the love of her life. He’s wearing a suit jacket and takes it off and gives it to her. She leaves him standing in the rain, steals his jacket and moves to a desert island where she becomes at one with nature.” What does that sound like? The truth is it sounds like a combination of things layered together at a decent walking pace, with a finale track at the end for the walk out.

There are things that do and don’t work on the catwalk, of course. Models will naturally walk at the pace of what ever is playing. Slow, dreamy tracks full of noodley guitar and whimsical lyrics will leave a string of models loitering round like they have all day to spare, but that’s fine if it works with the clothes, the setting and the general attitude. Some designers want their shows to feel like a party, and that’s always fun. Some designers don’t know what they want, only what they don’t want, and that’s harder to navigate. Most of the time, I’m afforded some input for the order of the songs and, obviously how best to mix them together, but for some shows there’s a set of cues to hit, and I’m the one in charge of working out how to blend Gloria Estefan into Kyuss.

When showtime arrives, and the audience has filed in, and the house lights are down, and the models are ready and the producer is on the cans ready to start the show and give me my cue and everyone’s waiting for the music to start, a wave of acid panic washes over me – what if I suddenly fall over and accidentally press stop on the CD player? (It would be fine: they play two CDs at the same time just in case one stops working). And then I hear the producer’s voice through my headphones instructing the girls before they walk out. “This is the music you play when you’re having the shag of your life,” he tells them, “ Now go!”

 

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