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Soundtracking Style – The Art of Ben Brunnemer
- Annika Dietiker
- Sep 8
- 2 min read
What do revolutionary fashion shows, captivating DJ sets, and showstopping social content have in common? Incredible music picks, thanks to Ben Brunnemer. You might recognize his taste from runway shows a la Schiaparelli, Thom Browne, and Feng Chen Wang; or maybe you caught him spinning records in LA, his home base.
Coming up in the New York DJ scene, Ben is no stranger to crate digging and “started coming to APM because [he] was familiar with the classic library stuff”. While visiting our HQ, he grabs a few vinyl favorites from our stacks and plays them, gravitating toward experimental drum tracks from the Conroy library and is taken back to hearing those same loops years ago. Like many others, APM’s archival tracks bring him a sense of nostalgia. Ben is a multi-faceted creative in the fashion world and beyond, he’s a composer, DJ, music supervisor, and dare I say (forgive my Gen Z-ness), curator of vibes.
Finding the right music for fashion shows can be incredibly difficult and translating those moments into music for Instagram clips can prove even more challenging. It’s one thing to score a runway in person, but a whole other thing entirely to get the soundtrack right for short attention spans on social media. This is just one of the challenges that Ben faces in his workflow, and something that APM helps with through our relationship.
On music for short form versus long form content, Ben had some insight:
“There is this idea from a few years ago about having stuff [on TikTok and Instagram] that really grabbed people ... most people are watching this silently, so we’ve been going more ambient ... These are all changing mediums. It's different than thinking about long form, because long form is like scoring a short film, versus short form, in the last year, we’ve begun to use just more sound effects, like scissor sounds, for example.”
I touched on Ben’s work using APM in my May blog detailing the APM tracks that Ben and Talia Collis picked for the Instagram music side of the iconic celebrity looks of Thom Browne. Beyond that, Ben graciously picked some APM tracks in Schiaparelli’s Haute Couture SS25 Collection, “Icarus”, scoring the breathtaking styles with sweeping strings and dreamy melodies.
“I use the library music when we want to have kind of classic soundtrack stuff, film score, and especially vintage sounding stuff and classical music. Like the KPM Classical Series is great for classical music.”
It was a pleasure having Ben Brunnemer at APM HQ, and it’s a pleasure getting to work with him. I could write about his work all day, but for now, take a listen to our podcast interview and Ben’s handcrafted playlist of APM’s tracks.
🎧 Listen to the whole interview below.
🎧 Listen to Ben Brunnemer’s Top Picks below
👉 Need the right sound for the runway and beyond? Check out the following playlists.