For her new fashion editorial, creative director Lindsay Hillenbrand chose to work around the theme of water, with a fisherman-inspired photo shooting and I had the pleasure to join her for SUPERIOR MAGAZINE.
In London’s Regent Canal, Lindsay took her team of photographer Chen Chen, make-up artist Kristiana Zaula, hair stylist Tommy Taylor, designer Maria Giannakopoulo and models George Rigby and Finnlay Grant on a boathouse to create her canal getaway. She explained that “there are a lot of things done with fishermen, but I wanted to take a contemporary twist on it.” A twist that translated into turning the classic rusty fisherman into a “boyish, mermaid-like” one. She coordinated the team to achieve the result she wanted, in a professional way, while keeping a really relaxed atmosphere.
In order to achieve such an editorial, Lindsay decided to collaborate with designers who graduated from University of the Arts, London, that she found through the university’s Showtime platform, and who created garments whose colours, textures or shapes would fit with the water theme. The emerging designers selected were Zheng Khe, Jasmine Grant, Taeyoun Park and Maria Giannakopoulo who came on set.
Maria talked a bit about her collection, “In the blink of an ear”, which was presented at the London College of Fashion’s catwalk competition in June 2015: “my initial inspiration was visualizing sounds.” The designer described the process behind creating her collection, which actually resulted from a comparison between living in Athens, from where she is from, and in London. “In Athens, because of the economical crisis and everything, the centre of Athens is so loud, so violent, people are screaming, saying their opinion really out there, and here everybody is in their own world, on the tube, you just get on the tube, then get out.” Based on this difference, Maria started recording sounds in both cities to try and visualize it, which then resulted in these thread pulled garments, referring to a spectrogram. Although the initial theme for Maria’s collection was not mentioning water, the wavy effect given by the wool, linen and cotton threads suited the photo shooting quite well.
On set, the whole team worked in achieving a fairy tale-like shoot. Make-up artist Kristiana Zaula and hair stylist Tommy Taylor discussed with Lindsay to know which look would fit better. Kristiana described her makeup look as “eerie, almost ghost-like looking fishermen.” She skilfully manipulated products to add roughness to a smooth skin – which recalls Lindsay’s idea of a contrasted fisherman – by using clay. “It cracked as it dried and created a patchy, sand-like texture. To soften the look, Vaseline worked well on the lips and blue highlights on the cheekbones and centre of the face.” Tommy, taking care of the hair, explained that he tried to not overdo it because “if it was too much of a fisherman look, then, it would have that edge that we want to achieve on it. It’s the subtlety within it.” With a group that well coordinated, the result was indeed a dreamy shoot, taking the viewer away in Lindsay’s imaginary world.
To push this idea forward, photographer Chen Chen, alternated her camera with polaroids. With posed snapshots, which is a contradiction in itself, she messed with the stereotypes people think of when seeing an editorial – or a fisherman. A great way to follow the art director’s theme, and a beautiful editorial shooting.
Der Beitrag LINDSAY HILLENBRAND | Fashion Editorial erschien zuerst auf SUPERIOR MAGAZINE.