Something beautiful happens when total strangers are asked to kiss. In the short film First Kiss, director Tatia Pilieva asks 20 daring individuals, who have never laid eyes on each other, to smooch before the camera. It's part of the new marketing campaign for clothing company Wren Studio. The participants, mostly friends of Pilieva and Wren CEO Melissa Coker, are dressed in clothes from the 2014 fall collection.
"They were chosen based on how they looked aesthetically together beforehand," says Coker. "No one knew who they would be paired with until they showed up at the studio. The only caveat was that we had to ensure they had never met before."
First Kiss is a clever social experiment in the awkwardness of intimacy, but it also evokes that long-forgotten teenage excitement of treading undiscovered territory. There are lots of awkward giggles, but perhaps most astonishing, is how easily a kiss creates a visceral bond between two people who barely know each other's names.
Whether any of these first kisses will actually lead to relationships is unclear, but Coker says that "several of the cast members" have been in touch since the shoot.