BANKS is coming back into her body and into her own as an artist.
The musician has officially returned to music after a two-year hiatus with her alluring new single and accompanying music video, “Skinnydipped,” an anthem about moving on from people and situations that no longer serve us. The drop comes in tandem with the star’s partnership with BVLGARI, with the brand’s dazzling Serpenti jewelry collection featured throughout the visuals. BANKS instantly thought of the brand’s collection when deriving inspiration for the music video’s visual aesthetic, both of which personify snakes as a reflection of themes of rebirth and shedding old skin.
Growing up, she was enamored by the snake designs of her mother’s own Serpenti pieces, so it only felt natural to incorporate the same snake element into her own work. “When I was little and looked at my mom’s jewelry, it’s just so visual and there’s such an aura around it,” BANKS says. “The second I put on these snake-depicted pieces of artwork … just the way the bracelets wrap around my wrist, the way the necklace wraps around my neck, the way the rings fit, you just feel so powerful when you’re wearing it.”
She adds, “When I put it on my body, it’s like you stand up a little straighter and you feel like a design creature. And that’s the snake aspect of it that makes it feel so alluring. The second you put it on, you inhabit the women of BVLGARI, the essence captured in every picture I’ve ever seen of a woman wearing it.” It’s this very alluring essence of snakes that she strives to capture in her new music video, and also embody onstage. “The movements of the snake are what I’ve always been drawn to the most,” BANKS shares. “I think that the way a snake moves is so interesting, because it doesn’t just go forward—it flows back and forth.”
BANKS was also intrigued by the powerful paradox of a high-society fashion brand embracing such an animalistic aesthetic symbol. A similar primitivism is reflected in the kind of transformative rebirth she depicts throughout the video, one that comes from fully embracing and aligning with our own bodies, and thereby with the most anti-society, animalistic parts of ourselves. “In the video, I wanted to portray women as divine, empowered, and almost creature-like. And that’s exactly what I think this collection is,” she says. “I wanted to portray them almost in a voyeuristic way—viewing all these women in the wild, kind of how snakes are viewed, where you just see them in their habitat,” she adds.
For BANKS, this voyeuristic spectacle serves to reflect a new kind of female empowerment, in the way one must fully surrender to her truest, rawest form—taking up space unapologetically and without the obligation to exist as anyone else but who she fully is. It’s a luxury that women especially don’t have, BANKS acknowledges, making her concept all the more a reclaim of the male gaze.
“What I’ve felt so strongly about my visuals and what I take most pride in is that I have a lot of sensuality in my music and my videos, but I never feel like it’s for anybody who’s watching to be turned on by me,” BANKS says. And like the intended effect of BVLGARI’s artwork, “It’s always in the most empowering way.”
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