Joanne Borgella

Joanne is a singer, songwriter, actress and model who’s been a bevy of reality shows including, American Idol where she made it as a final 24 contestant.  I’ve had the occasion to hear her voice and as a conoisseur of singing, it was nothing short of a delight for me to hear it.  Also peep her phat ass ring.  It’s her own creation under her label Ella by J. Borgella, available at Barney’s and Bergdorf’s.  Check her out in the Thurman studded bubble heels.

They’ve been published!

The campaign has officially launched.

To start, we are running “Sung Kang in Sneaker Deluxe” in YRB and Vice, both very dope mags.

And I introduce “Sung Kang in Tuxedo Man”.

We are running this one in Marie Claire’s Fall Fashion issue.

The female model is actually Julie LaPlaca, who was once my marketing associate and manager at the store (yes, we hire models).  She has now transported herself to LA to try her hand at fame and fortune.  Having modeled for Jump, she’ll be famous in no time.

!Stay tuned for the rest of the ads and short films!

Taiwan Part 2: The Shoot

The expectations were high and I was, admittedly, a bit nervous on how it’d all turn out. We’d planned it for months and our concepts were solid but, of course, there were a few variables. One being that I’d never done anything like this before; the last shoot I was involved in was at a much smaller scale and a lot less complex. There would be a host of creative minds involved: me (Jump marketing director), Jeff (Blanq founder and director), Shu (photographer), Sung (actor/model), Boris and Jason (hair stylists), makeup, etc. Working in fashion, I’ve found where things are highly subjective, there’s a lot of room for disagreement and discord. Somehow though, this team was completely different; it’s not to say that we agreed on everything but somehow all our minds were synced in such a way that we were able to figure out solutions very easily and agree upon what struck us as the right treatment.

Here’s Sung getting dolled up.

Julie too.

Here’s a look at Tuxedo Man meets Modern English.

Here’s some of the crew taking a break. That’s Boris, Shu and Jason. Long hair was big.

After two days, ten hours each, the shoot was done. There was definitely a real synergy, no egos getting in the way and we were really able to just create! Jeff had already figured out how to translate our concepts into print and styled it. Fresh from shooting Ninja Assassin, Sung was able to bring an active element that worked beautifully with what we were doing. In addition, his work ethic was amazing. Shot after shot, he simply delivered whatever we asked him to do, “Turn your head this way and make sure your foot is angled that way so you can see the shoe.” Et voile, he’d get it in the next shot and do 8 different ones that all kept those elements but had different nuances to them. And then there was Shu who was able to capture each and every aspect of it with his camera. He is the number one photographer in Taiwan and even he remarked that he’d never worked with anyone like Sung before. There was no way he could’ve achieved those results from just a model.

And we gave it a Jump!

Needless to say, the shoot went beautifully and the campaign will launch soon. I’m just starting to get some of the finished ads sent from Taiwan and they look phenomenal! Watch out for the first ad in Marie Claire’s September issue.

We celebrated with a very unique dinner at a Mongolian restaurant.