LOS ANGELES — Kirsten Dunst sits at a toy piano on top of a grassy mound, surrounded by the cobalt blue Balboa Lake. Despite her tiny size, it’s a wonder the even tinier four-legged bench underneath her doesn’t snap.
Dunst has escaped the elaborate rigor of her day on the set of “Spider-Man 3” to tickle the toy ivories for a friend, Berkeley-born designer Erin Fetherston. The two met at a party in Paris last year when Dunst was there filming Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette.” That same night they met Ellen Von Unwerth.
A year later, the trio have come together — along with Fetherston’s fiancé, the multimedia artist Hedi Ferjani, and a small crew — to shoot a short black-and-white film that the 25-year-old designer will show during Paris Fashion Week.
“It’s a little hectic right now with ‘Spider-Man.’ But I said, ‘I’m doing this for my friend and you can’t stop me,'” Dunst said during the daylong shoot last Friday, jokingly feigning her dramatic demand. “I know with Ellen doing it, it will turn out really cool.”
There are three other young women, all models with long, angelic blonde curls like Fetherston. Dunst’s hair is red because of “Spider-Man.”
“When I started designing, I didn’t know Kirsten, but she was the only one who really represented the spirit of my clothes,” said Fetherston. “She’s this very happy beauty, but she has a lot of depth to her.”
Fetherston followed her studies at the Parsons The New School for Design affiliate in Paris by starting her own couture collection. Ferjani’s mother worked in the couture ateliers at Yves Saint Laurent, Lanvin and Guy Laroche and served as her guide. After two seasons on the calendar, however, Fetherston shifted to ready-to-wear for spring 2005. “I transitioned out because you can end up doing amazing concept dresses, but the real gratification is making clothes people can find and wear.”
At Balboa Park, costume changes take the four players from white dresses into black. The looks, one with a cape and oversized bow, are chic and very girlish. Take away the white tights and polkadotted ballerina flats and they could look grown-up on a red carpet or at a gala.
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“Erin actually has a vision, where so many other people just copy things these days,” said Dunst. “She has an appreciation of fabrics and quality. And she has a story to everything she does.”
A legion of ducks quack by as if according to script and Von Unwerth is deliriously pleased. She walks the women through a little waltz, but when the camera rolls, they spontaneously go into their own playful moves.
Fetherston appears in the film, too. The sun is setting fast, and she comes bouncing out of the motor home in a lace frock from the collection, her stylist Leith Clark in tow. The two women also met at the party in Paris, where the American Clark is another expat and the founder of Lula magazine there.
A couple of senior citizens, zipped up in their velour tracksuits, stand by and stare. No budget means the park couldn’t exactly be shut down for the shoot. The motley crew looks like any other bunch of film college kids in Los Angeles, and are left unbothered. At the risk of being revealed, though, Dunst, who has to leave to make an evening fitting for “Spider-Man,” doesn’t hold back: “This was such a great day. I love you guys!”