FOR THE country's most famous nude model, it's a big step. But even the most perfectly shaped piece of Plasticine has to put his clothes on eventually. This Thursday, Esquire magazine will publish a five-page photoshoot featuring the beloved Plasticine character Morph sporting a range of designer outfits from the likes of Hermès, Gucci and Prada. Fashion never looked so good.
The shoot is the brainchild of Esquire's art director, David McKendrick, 32, from Clydebank, who came up with the idea – using the three-inch Plasticine model as the clotheshorse for spring and summer's key pieces of menswear – during a lazy Friday
afternoon in the office last March. "I was spending too much time on YouTube looking at childhood TV shows and Morph popped up, and that was it. I just thought he would make a great fashion model. It was a bit of a beast to take on, though."
Indeed it was. Esquire got in touch with Aardman Productions who, back in 1977, long before the days of Nick Park, Wallace and Gromit, created the loveable Morph to feature on Tony Hart's art programme for children, Take Hart. Miniature versions of the clothes were painstakingly copied and sewn from the originals – flown in from fashion houses across Europe – and the entire Aardman team, including Morph's creator, Peter Lord, got involved.
"Peter loved the idea, and got heavily involved right away. He brought it to life for us," says McKendrick. "From start of production to the end took three months. Shooting just one still photograph took three or four days work. You can usually do an entire fashion shoot in two days."
That the shoot is to be published a fortnight after Hart's death at the age of 83 makes its appearance even more poignant. "I kept thinking, 'I can't wait until Tony Hart sees this,'" says McKendrick. "It's very sad that he never will. But it's great that Morph is still about."
For a generation that is now in its late twenties and thirties, Morph was, and remains, an icon. Able to turn himself into anything he pleased, whether it be a chair, an octopus, or several Morphs of different size, his great appeal to children was his ever-changing shape. Whatever Morph wanted to be, he could instantly 'morph' into. And if all that wasn't enough, he got to live in a wooden pencil box and eat endless strawberry shortcakes.
It was perhaps his shape-shifter abilities that explain why, when a toy version of Morph was released, it bombed: Morph's fans wanted a Morph that could do everything the real Morph could do, not a lump of dead Plasticine. Hart himself described Morph as "an amorphous being who could change shape at will, and whose function was to cause me aggravation by running amok over my drawing board, and other acts of mayhem", and remained fond of him right up until his death, writing a moving tribute to his Plasticine friend when the original model was destroyed in the fire that ripped through Aardman's Bristol warehouse in 2005.
McKendrick, the same age as Morph, was a huge fan of the programme as a child. "He defied all reality. He'd melt into things, do things that were physically impossible – he was an amazing little character. People of my generation look back on him with such fond memories."
TV comedian Phill Jupitus is just one famous Morph fan, and even owns a Plasticine Morph made for him by Peter Lord. "It's so beautiful and lovely," he recently said, proudly. Lord, meanwhile, admits that Morph is his favourite character, describing him as "my son, my little Plasticine child".
All the junior animators at Aardman train with Morph before moving on to more complex characters, partly because he provides the ideal canvas for ideas, and also because, as Lord says, it "keeps him alive".
So as Morph hits his early thirties, perhaps settling down with a girlfriend or his old chum Chas – who makes a cameo appearance in the Esquire photoshoot as the 'photographer' – his legacy appears to be that he inspired those who grew up with him to think that they, just like Morph, could turn themselves into anything they wanted. Even a top fashion model.
