Can you guess what this shoot is based on? Yep, it’s Rihanna’s Only Girl (in the World). Even though the song is almost six years old, I’ve always wanted to do this shoot based on her music video, which I loved then and still love to this day. This was during Rihanna’s high fashion phase and I loved everything from the red hair, the clothes and the shot of her standing atop that wooden structure on the lake. While I may have no lake nearby to copy that, I did finally get to do this shoot, after passing up on it summer after summer.
The location of choice was Richmond Park, of course, a favourite location of mine for the exotic, unusual and not run-of-the-mill shoots. Thankfully the park is so wide open and rural it was perfect for this shoot.
So while the inspiration for this shoot was definitely Rihanna’s music video, especially in post-production, I did veer off the idea quite a bit in the outfit. Originally I did want to do a shoot with a tutu and the white embellished style outfits she wore in the music video, but as so often happens I didn’t like sticking so faithfully to her vision. The breakthrough for this shoot happened when I realised that hot pink was a key trend for spring/summer and also for this autumn/winter season. Once I realised that this shoot became a lot more easy to style and define and led me to finally shooting it in middle July, after two plus years of thinking about it. Choosing this sexy hot pink slip dress from ASOS was incredibly easy; it also meant that I knew what other outfits to choose and I finally got to shoot an old favourite dress of mine, the Versace for H&M pink and black number that I’ve wanted to shoot since I bought it over three years ago. The third outfit was all about the silver and sequins and I thought it would contrast nicely with the pink from the other two outfits.
The balloons were a nice added touch and I absolutely loved shooting with the pink smoke bombs, even if they only last for 60 seconds each. If I ever do a shoot like that again, I will need to buy a heck of a lot more!
So that is this week’s shoot. I hope you love it as much as I did shooting it. Next week we start with the first of the September shoots, and boy are this year’s ones going to be good!!!
Outfit 1 –Â Dress: Versace for H&M, old – Leather strappy sandals: New Look, similar ones found hereÂ
Outfit 2 –Â Satin slip dress: ASOS, found here – Leather strappy sandals: same as beforeÂ
Outfit 3Â – Sequined bib: River Island, old – Sequined shorts: DIY – White crop t-shirt: H&M, old
