Adventures in the land of Otilee

On the bit

Written by Otilee on July 23, 2010 – 7:56 pm -

A couple of months ago I approached by gorgeous local model Claire Stratford for a creative model portfolio shoot. Inspired by Dior’s Couture SS10 collection and in part Hermes Fall RTW as well as past Hermes advertising imagery I set out to put together an equestrian concept for the shoot ‘Creme de la dressage’.

Below is the original concept board I put together for it… didn’t end up turning out exactly as I had envisaged it – but I’ve found that isn’t always a bad thing!

There were three horses we worked with on the day and while they were absolutely beautiful animals…. however, animals are generally not the easiest to work with That coupled with me having a recent back injury which had really thrown a spanner in the works with being able to work properly meant we had to compromise a tad. I’d wanted to do a second hair style which involved a sort of weaving look (as seen on my concept board below with the horses mane) but I was in a heap of pain that day so we just stuck with the one hair look.

With the styling I really wanted to get hold of some awesome leather pieces to give that great tactile uniformity with the bridles etc and contrast against the horses fur and Claire’s hair. So, when I came across Kate Wilks’ graduate collection I was onto her like a flash to see if she was back from Paris and interested. She was, her gear was perfect and she was even keen to help out dressing on the day, thanks Kate! Special thanks also to Teneille Sorgiovani for driving up from Harvey to do the makeup and the lovely folk at the property in Wanneroo for taking the time to also handle the horses as well as style their manes dressage style (they even whipped out needle and thread to do those knots!) <3

CREME DE LA DRESSAGE – CONCEPT BOARD

and….THE FINAL IMAGES

yes… the heart shaped white fur on the horses heads is digitally illustrated

IMAGE CREDITS

Art direction + Photography/Post | Otilee
Model + Hair | Claire Stratford, Catherine Ruze Agency
Makeup | Teneille Sorgiovanni
Featured garments | Kate Wilks

AND…. it appears everything is coming up horses! Along with the above mentioned designer collections that the shoot was originally inspired by I also just came across these jewelery designs from the recent Fall / Winter2010 collections of Gucci and Ralph Lauren (although….not really a surprise for Ralph Lauren). Pretty damn cool!