The implementation of ad campaigns for luxury fashion houses generally involves many people holding super-impressive titles such as “creative director”, “stylist”, “producer” or “set designer”. Ad campaigns are often successful, they are sometimes catastrophic – the Balenciaga campaign launched in November 2022 featuring children with teddy bears in bondage outfits being the latest example.
When it comes to my modest activity, it turns out that my little person brings together the attributions – I did not say skills – of the creative director, the set designer, the producer and the model (and I laugh on the latter word, from the top of my 48 years and 164 centimeters).
My team is reduced to the bone: a patient professional photographer and a schizophrenic me.
May I recall that I spoke about my attributions, not my skills. Which are non-existent when it comes to anything that is not intellectual.
This explains why I often appear concerned on certain photos, my compartmented brain hesitating on the “creative direction” of a picture or the accessories that will materialize the desired atmosphere. I usually show up at the photo shoot location with a bag full of accessories and props – and from here, yes please, God help us.
My life as a lawyer and mother also explains why the “stylist” that I am (not) does not have time to properly hem a gown and why it is necessary, at ground level, to create a hem with a large double-sided tape. There isn’t – of course – enough of said large double-sided tape, and the hem miserably falls on one side.
Makeshift aids are numerous: beyond the large double-sided tape which shortens the dress which is too long, the binder clips used by lawyers to gather documents tighten the clothes at the waist and are invisible as long as no picture of the back of the silhouette is taken and the simple satin ribbon of a shoe bag can slim down the size of a macramé and organza jacket.
The wind is uncontrollable, however.
All these obstacles never prevent me from being silly and goofy, as we know.
Light is the main concern of a photographer. What a luck when – deprived of his flash – mine sees his model suddenly lit up by car headlights. Which also explains why said model looks like a deer caught in the headlights of a car.
Luckily my photographer knows what he’s doing. Because as far as I’m concerned, I have no idea.
February 3, 2023
