Okay this has been a long time coming, and I honestly tend to not talk about these things in "public", but it's rubbing me the wrong way a little too much so here we go I guess...
I want to start by saying that I'm absolutely here to hear other opinions people might have regarding this topic or to be corrected if I say something that's not quite true because I'm not above making mistakes, as long as you're nice about it. I definitely do not mean to bring bad vibes to the fandom or anything like that (and I hope this doesn't come off as rude - that's not my intention at all; I'm just giving my opinion on what I've been observing lately), but I've seen more and more people talking about this, so I figured I might as well write this down once and for all.
Now, let's start from the beginning:
There are a couple people I've talked about this with on dms, and if you're one of them, you'll know that my opinion on this topic has changed a bit over time.
If you've been here for a while, you probably know that this all began when people first started commenting about Nace's Karlo Kirri outfits, and at first I thought - or at least I wanted to think, I suppose - it was a bit of an exaggeration.
For a long time, I really really loved seeing all the outfits he came up with, and the way he integrated the Idria lace into them was such a nice touch, but I'm not as interested in clothes/fashion as many other people in the fandom are, and I guess I used to look more at the whole picture - aka all their outfits as a band - than I looked at the way he styled all of them individually, if that makes sense.
But then, when people began talking about it, I started paying more attention to them individually, and I can't say anything other than I have to agree with those comments. I really wanted it to be just an exaggeration, I really did (because, as someone with more body weight than average myself, "fatphobic" is not a word I'd just use mildly if I didn't have serious proof,) but he keeps proving it isn't every single time.
Personally, the album release tour last year was definitely a huge breaking point. Just by looking at the instagram posts they made after each of the shows, you can appreciate it - the rest of them always change outfits more than Nace, and then there's also the issue with all of them wearing thin clothes, tank tops, or even being basically shirtless (in Jure's case, though that's not news), while Nace was sweating his ass off because the poor man was put in 100 layers that, in my opinion - and I guess this is more of a matter of taste -, were kinda bad compared to what we've seen KK do for the others, and they didn't flatter him at all.
Do I still think he looked good? Yes, but only because he's gorgeous; those clothes were just. not it.
I have to admit that, for some time, I thought maybe it was Nace's choice to wear those clothes, 1) because I'm not really sure how much say they actually get when it comes to their outfits, 2) because I get that not everyone is as comfortable showing their body, and that's completely okay, so if it was his choice to wear more layers, I'd absolutely understand, and 3) because, once again, I didn't want to believe that their stylist was actually a fatphobic asshole.
The thing is - yes, we might see him wearing looser clothes or more layers than the rest of the guys on normal days, and it's not like I'm expecting him to suddenly appear shirtless during a whole gig like Jure does (definitely not if he doesn't feel comfortable enough to do it), but one thing is what you like wearing on a regular day and another is what you're willing to wear for more "special" occasions like concerts, photoshoots, MVs, etc., you know?
All of this, as I remember mentioning in a conversation I had with @mermaidsheenaz, was made all the more obvious after the Karneval photoshoot JO did with Jere. In it, we see Nace wearing a fitted costume and even some eye makeup, and he looks so Happy. And it's not just an our-long-distance-friend-came-to-visit-us kind of smile - he's happy, he's confident, he's glowing, and that is what I've found has been missing this whole time with the clothes KK has been making for him.
(I would like to clarify that this is not just a KK issue; it also happens in photoshoots and such where they get styled by other people. I'm just sticking to the current topic at hand. I do feel like we don't talk about it enough, and I feel like the main reason we don't might be the fact that he still looks good, but yeah... Let's move on to my next point before this turns into a 50-pages-long essay.)
Even though I feel like Nace's case is the most striking one, ever since I started paying closer attention to these details, I realized that over time all their outfits kept getting worse (except for Bojan's, I would say). To me, it seems like the "problem" started with him and later expanded to the rest of the band.
It looks like, as time goes by, except for Bojan (and *maybe* Kris, though I don't really pay much attention to his outfits in particular, so I'm not going to start claiming something I have no idea about), they get fewer and fewer new outfits, and the very few new ones they get are nothing compared to the really cool ones we see on Bojan (like those shirts with the heart-shaped opening in his chest, of which he's gotten two different ones by now).
Now, I'm obviously not saying Bojan doesn't deserve all those cool outfits, and I absolutely love them btw, but isn't it unfair that there's so much effort behind his outfits when the others keep wearing the same clothes over and over again? Come on, Nace had like one (1) pair of trousers, two plain t-shirts (one white and one black), one white shirt that he's been wearing for over a year and whose fabric is so torn by now it has a big-ass hole in one of the armpits, and one (1) single jacket during the whole tour, and basically the only change we saw for him was when he borrowed Jan's jacket for the Prague gig...
Of course, there's no problem with them repeating outfits - they've showed us more than once that they don't mind doing that - but isn't it a bit, idk, weird? Making such an effort to make beautiful clothes for some bandmates and leaving the others to wear the same exact clothes over and over again?
But up to this point, it had always been about clothes. The Supersonic MV though...
First of all, idek why he was in charge of directing the MV (?), but I'm not getting there right now. The thing is he did and choices were made. And I'd say these choices many people have already been talking about today prove all of this right once again.
I have to say that the moment I heard that KK was going to be the director of the video and Bojan said during his discord livechat that he was going to be the main character, and not only that but that he had to get to the place really early in the morning while the guys only got there in the late evening, I already had a feeling that something like this would happen. I just didn't think it'd be this bad.
I mean, don't get me wrong, the premise of the MV is interesting, the visuals are nice, the place is cool, the final product is nice and I believe it fits the vibe of the song really well - it had so much potential, and it could've been so much better, if it wasn't because 4 out of 5 of the jokers have a total screen time of like 5 seconds :/
When I watched the beginning, for a fleeting second, I got my hopes up because it genuinely looked like maybe they'd get more screen time than I originally thought they would. I don't think it would've been that difficult to come up with an idea that managed to include all of them a little more while still keeping Bojan as the main character if that's what they wanted, and that beginning with all of them standing there could've been a great start for something like that. But alas, I got disappointed in that regard.
I don't like how this always seems to circle back to Bojan, because every time I try to talk about this, it seems like I have something against him, but it's not that. It's not Bojan getting attention that is the problem here - it's the fact that Jan, Jure, Kris, and Nace don't get any.
We get it - he is the frontman, and I do think that the others probably don't mind too much because it's clear that they don't really like being the center of attention that much which, understandable. (Although I also think Bojan probably doesn't want to be the center of attention all the damn time and would also very much appreciate it if his boys would get some love and attention too, thank you very much.)
I can understand that certain stories need a main character, but that doesn't mean the rest of the guys should only appear for 0.2 seconds each, nor does it mean that the main character should always be Bojan (unless the others just really don't want to).
It's the fact that I'm not surprised that makes it worse because it keeps happening so often that, even if it's still sad, I got used to them not getting any proper attention. And with this? I mean, having them stay on the back all the time is one, already bad, thing, but this was just the last straw... The four of them get around 5 seconds total of screen time, and between how dark the whole thing is, the smoke, and all the damn flickering lights, you can't see shit. I had to put it at 0.25x speed and it still was way too difficult to get any good shots of anyone who wasn't Bojan because everything happens too fast, kind of as if they didn't even want us to see them properly in the first place (and at least Nace seems to agree with us in some parts).
At some point, I started thinking that maybe KK was just being like the majority of interviewers out there, insisting on interviewing only Bojan and focusing only on Bojan during 95% of the rare interviews in which the others are there as well. Maybe this was just the same thing but with clothes somehow, or who knows, maybe he has secret beef with everyone in the band except for Bojan for some reason and god knows why he keeps working with them; man, at this point I have no idea.
Then, I watched the new MRFY MV, which is also a motion picture by KK (??) - although this time with a co-director -, and I also noticed some things.
In this MV, they're robbing in KK's shop (ironic, I know), or at least a shop full of his clothes, I'm not sure if it's *his* shop, anyways. You can basically only see Štras' face (the frontman again, I guess), while the rest of them have significantly less screen time and are wearing masks all the time. Rok appears a bit more than the others and he's wearing sunglasses and his face is only covered from the nose down. Meanwhile Tomi and Dejan barely even appear on screen and they're wearing full face masks (balaclavas?) to the point I can't even tell who's who between the two of them.
Again, they're literally robbing a shop, so in this case it does kind of make sense that their faces are covered, but idk... it just gives me a weird feeling.
So yeah, idk, does KK have beef with the rest of them? Does he view every single band out there as the frontman + some other guys? Does he think people only care about the frontman/singer and don't even pay attention to the rest of their bandmates, and sees them as the best way to sell his brand, leaving the rest aside to focus more on the singers? Have I been thinking about this for so long that I've started seeing things that aren't there?
Believe me when I say I'm really trying to find an explanation that makes sense for all these... arguably questionable choices, but it's getting harder and harder each passing day, and, at this point, I'm sorry but he just looks like a bit of an asshole to me.
