Black/White Widow Shoot-Fall 2009

Hello! As promised, I am staying on top of my blogging! I think that I will start from the bottom of my last post and work my way up. The style project was a concept of a Black and White Widow. The Black Widow was supposed to appear dark and depressed while the other widow-the White Widow was supposed to be happy and fairy-like. When I first heard about the job, I was unaware that the styling would require-wedding dresses.

Now my first thought when I found this out (after I accepted the job) was where in the world and I going to find wedding dresses that someone is going to let me- here comes the crazy part: BORROW. Most stylist borrow and return the items that they merchandise/use. This is anything from the clothes, to the accessories, even the shoes!

Luckily for this project, I didn't need shoes. At the time of this shoot I was living in Fullerton, but working for a celeb. stylist in LA. I hadn't been working for the stylist up in LA long enough to borrow any clothes from her contacts, so I was on my own. And I needed to get resourceful, fast. First thing I did was venture over to downtown Fullerton. There are a couple of great Bridal stores down there as well as tons of vintages stores.

I walked up and down into every store introducing myself and getting to know store owners. It is not easy to feel out a store owner you just met and try to borrow there merchandise for a shoot that will most likely not be published-bc for the store owners, there is nothing in it immediately for them. And I can appreciate where they are coming from. However, that wasn't getting me anywhere either. Majority of the Bridal stores won't let you go near their gowns-they are thousand dollar gowns that could easily be stained or ruined. Part of me didn't want to responsibility of their gowns either, I knew I couldn't shell out the money it would take should anything go wrong.

Then I came across a vintage and costume store that was a true gem. They had a bunch of vintage wedding gowns to choose from, and even better, they were willing to let me borrow them for a few days for a very reasonable fee. Phew! I found wedding gowns for my first shoot on my own. I had already accomplished half the battle. To be honest, I am not sure what I would have done if I had not found this great little vintage store StrayCat & Costumes.

Here are some of my favorite images from the shoot:

The shoot went off without a hitch. I even got to do some Art Directing and play with some of the props and posing of the models. The gowns were unscathed, and most importantly my photographers were blown away by the merchandise I found for them to photograph. We all lucked out to have two beautiful models to work with.