Humberto Leon was a sophomore at UC Berkeley when he first caught the video for Björk’s 1995 hit single “It’s Oh So Quiet” on MTV. “It changed my life,” the designer and Opening Ceremony founder says. “I remember like it happened yesterday. It was so happy and joyful, yet weird and strange—everything I love in one.” Shot by filmmaker Spike Jonze in the San Fernando Valley as an homage to Technicolor musicals, the video perfectly matches the song’s quirky effervescence and abrupt transitions between gentle verses and brassy choruses with colorful, highly stylized visuals and theatrical choreography. Nearly three decades later, it remains the Icelandic musician’s biggest hit, thanks in large part to its constant rotation on MTV.
Few may know that Jonze, then 25 but already a seasoned director for the likes of Fatboy Slim, Dinosaur Jr, and the Beastie Boys, only met Björk the day before. The now-defunct Detour Magazine asked if he could shoot photos of her at Chateau Marmont for an interview. “We just went down to the pool and shot photos in the pool for two hours,” Jonze recalls, “It wasn’t a big production in any way. She was just roaming around the Chateau.” Thousands of photos were taken, but only six were published. Still, they became classics in the Björk canon, wonderfully capturing the spellbinding slyness that would catapult her to stardom with the album Post. Jonze shelved the outtakes and never revisited them until recently, when Leon—a friend and collaborator—unearthed them while helping organize his archives.
