We caught up with musician Eliot Sumner as she launched the Mercedes-Benz Spring Summer 2017 campaign in Tbilisi with London based Georgian designer David Koma and Austrian model Lucie Von Alten staring alongside Sumner in the short fashion film “Burning Desire”. Sumner is known to many as the singer behind I Blame Coco, but step away from the spotlight to focus on exploring music from DJ-ing to composing only to come back out in 2014 with her EP Information followed by a full album, abandoning any possible music manufacturing to come clean with her own sound.
First and foremost, you are a musician. So, what sparked your interest in collaborating with Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week campaign for Spring Summer 2017?
It was really the team around the project, knowing that Christian Larson (Swedish music video director) was going to direct it. We hadn’t met before, but we had mutual friends. I knew his work and wanted to be a part of it. I got the chance to go to Romania to film it. Loved it, the whole experience was great.
It was really about the team involved including Lucie Von Alten (girlfriend of the past two years), in a way, it was very personal.
We are both up for the experience! I’ve always wanted to come to Georgia, and now the project has brought me here. I’m very happy to be here, just arrived early this morning.
Moving over to music. Your new album Information came out earlier this year. What was your favourite part of the process from conceiving the album to hitting the road?
Touring for me, playing. I love touring. It took quite a lot of time to get this record together. We recorded it over Christmas and put it out a year later actually. Which is quite frustrating, because at moments you are just sitting on it trying to build an infrastructure around it.
This album took us on the road around America for the first. Collectively as a band, it was all our dreams to go around in a tiny bus visiting places like Kansas City and Omaha, Nebraska. Really seeing this chunk of the country.
Did any audiences really stand out?
Many of them did, every place we played stood out in their own way making it very exciting, but Kansas City stood out because we went back to the same venue that we played before. We made friends with some of the locals there, it feels good to build a family around a place and the entire country.
I wanted to ask you. How is Eliot Sumner different than “Coco”?
I think I know a little bit more what I am doing now. Definitely got the right team and I’m a bit older now. I know more about what I want to get out of it.
What are your plans for 2017?
I just started writing a new record, and we start recording on Monday in England. The band is all there and our producer. Going to test our some new stuff in the studio for a week and see how that goes.
Any plans to play in Paris soon?
I hope so! I love Paris. Didn’t really get a chance this year to play in Europe as the US is such a big, vast place, it take a lot of time. With the new material, I hope it will take us around Europe and other continents as well.
Eliot Sumner Photographed by StyleDuMonde at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Tbilisi
