So this shoot has been in the making in one shape or form for the last one and a half years. It was originally on my list of locations to shoot and then when a trend and shoot was planned for it, it ended up going disastrously wrong. The shoot in question would have been for H&M’s collaboration with Balmain and it was one of those shoots where everything that could go wrong did go wrong. At first we were meant to get a loan of some pieces before the collection officially launched, but that fell through because of some behind-the-scenes PR nonsense I still don’t understand to this day. So we decided to try our luck and do the shoot anyway on the day the collection was launched, which meant waiting in line from 5am onwards at Oxford Circus. Again, I thought, I’ll do it for the blog, and it’s not like I don’t have experience getting up at that time of night. So we waited for a good 6-7 hours and in the end never got anything because of a stampede occurring right outside the doors and for safety measures they shut the store for several hours. To say I, and everyone else around me was pissed off, was an understatement, but that’s how it went. The shoot was officially cancelled and the location was put on the back-burner.
When it came time of plan this year’s The September Issue and figure out what type of shoots to do, I insisted on doing a shoot in the Barbican. While last year’s shoots were amazing, they were all the same kind of shoot. A rural location with high-concept clothes and a high production value. And while that’s great, for this year’s issue I wanted to diversify my shoots and do something a little more streetwear and urban. I really don’t do enough streetwear and urban shoots, so it was important for me to include one for this issue. We’ll still have lots of rural locations and high-concept styling, but for the first shoot of the issue it had to be something different.
For the outfit itself, I actually struggled with the styling for a long time, so much so I almost cancelled this shoot a second time. I knew this shoot had to be urban and young, but that’s all I could figure out. I also had an idea of hitting a few different trends in one shoot, but no idea which trends they should be and how I would pull this off. And then somehow in work one day the idea of doing blue velvet and those puffa jackets we saw at Balenciaga hit me and I knew what the shoot would be. In the end I covered quite a few different trends from the padded jackets, over-the-knee patent boots, silver, sporty sandals and choker necklaces in one shoot.
Not bad indeed for a shoot that turned out pretty well after all the drama!
