Love to the Industry

Worked with a new client today and there was so much to appreciate. I was able to visit their very beautiful premises and get to creative direct their E-catalogue for their next season, how very exciting! We started with casting models today and did the style out for the clothing. This whole process never fails to fascinate me. Whenever I get to see and touch clothing, it's like visiting a candy store for a kid, no matter how many times I have done this, it is still the best feeling in the world.

I often ask myself, without ever seeing the clothing, how do I know what to combine with what? And I realise this has nothing to do with experience. It seems that the clothes "call" me and not based on any rules or guidelines, there is a sense of how things come together. From the actual pieces of clothing, to the collection, to how the photos are laid out on the page, it's one entire thing rather than several. That's how my body works, it senses from the microscopic level of harmony and it has to arrive at the same point everywhere, macroscopically.

Hence, how the team works together, how the communication with the clients are, they are all one big package inclusive of the entire creative process and final product.

In our casting yesterday, there was an event where one of the models that came represented herself under 2 model agencies. So instead of thinking we would cast 5 models, only 4 models came! The looseness of behaviour of how this happened, without prior communication from the model to either agencies she took the casting from, impacted on everyone. Another model was late for the casting, not just for a few minutes but for almost an hour! I feel a bit embarrassed working in the industry for a long time to witness such behaviour, but simply observed it all and held the space for the clients and the team. This was later on brought to light to the both agencies, so our industry can keep functioning in transparency rather than dishonesty.

You can well say, these things happen, and yes, in fact having worked in this industry for over 25 years, I have come across many situations where models turn up not like how they look on their comp cards. We have over the years from being deeply stressed to being able to manoeuvre any situation to do an amazing shoot. But wait, holding back saying something has held back the models from actually deepen in their own responsibility of self-care and time management. We all deserve the preciousness of flow in a shoot, and therefore, let's keep our own responsibility of taking care of ourselves intact.

A project happens not because of one person, but because of the coming together of all parties. And the extent we impact each other is huge, let's do this together!