I KNOW: I love an African Print
I worked on a shoot last week for Royal Jelly Harlem. RJH is an amazing clothing/home furnishings, accessories line designed and built by incredible mother daughter duo Maya Gorgoni and Teta (aka "MOM") Originally we were going to shoot a lookbook for these ladies, but after meeting with them and seeing their natural beauty, dynamism and gorgeous loft in Soho, we decided to do a lifestyle story about them and their line. The clothes just looked so great on them! Here are some pics from this story. We will also shoot a lookbook for them when they get back from their trunk show in Paris!
www.royaljellyharlem.com
I KNOW: That I love jewelry
I few months ago my friend Isa showed me pictures of her beautiful, funny, intelligent aspiring model and daughter Julia.
I immediately wanted to have her model in a shoot and had so many ideas. One of the cool things about Julia is that she dyes her hair blue, so I wanted it to be a shoot where that aspect was highlighted. I was talking about it to my friend Caroline one evening and she had the brilliant idea of a mermaid story. I then remembered a whole bunch of jewelry artists that I wanted to shoot that were extremely "Mermaidy" in the sense that the pieces were either made from or inspired by nature or organic geometric shapes. My friend and photographer Erin Patrice O'brien had the idea to shoot it for a beauty magazine that she works with sometimes called "Your Beauty Industry."
Some inspiration
For hair we wanted to do some jewelry in the hair and make it gorgeous, but messy and also have some braids. I'm really into braids right now.
For makeup originally we had wanted a clean clear look, but then as the shoot progressed on the actual day, as you will see, we got really creative. We decided to get another model and I went hunting for my favorite jewels and mermaid clothes. Here are some samples (All credits and websites at the bottom of blog post):
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| Alex Streeter |
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| Flotsam and Jetsam |
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| Erika Dray |
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| Hilary Park |
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| Emily Miranda Studio |
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| Perry Gargano |
I picked up clothes from some of my favorites, Zero and Maria Cornejo, Marc Jacobs, Mara Hoffman, Mandarin and General, Artists and Revolutionaries. (Credits and websites at bottom of blog post. Here are some of the pics from the shoot. These are just snapshots. When the mag comes out I will re-post.
Photographer: Erin Patrice O'brien
Hair: Christina Mirabella
Makeup: Debra Macki
Stylist: Stella Metzner
Jewelry: Alex Streeter, All For The Mountain, ARENAgal, Erika Dray, Emily Miranda Studio, Flotsam and Jetsam, Hilary Park, Lisa Levine, Perry Gargano, SonicRibbon.
Clothes: Artists and Revolutionaries, Mandarin and General, Mara Hoffman, Marc Jacobs, Zero and Maria Cornejo.
I know: That I love Artists and Revolutionaries.
The other day I styled a Lookbook with John-Michael Schlotter, the designer of Artists and Revolutionaries. He used to have a store in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Now he doesn't have the store anymore, but he has been asked to be part of a presentation for Green Fashion at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week. We were shooting two Lookbooks because he had not shot one for Spring yet. We decided to keep the look simple using only his designs and one jewelry designer for Spring called Cuyo designed by Tamika Rivera and one for fall called SonicRibbon designed by Jessica Findlay. We also loved the amazing shoe designs of Keiko H for K* and luckily our model was able to fit them so we only wanted to use her shoes. The photographer was Robert Christenson of Faubel-Cristenson.
The hair stylist was Kristin Bretz and the makeup artist was Brittany Whetnall.
This is a preview of Spring 2011 but I'm not going to post Fall 2012 yet because we don't want to blow our load before the show on Friday!
I know: That Johnny Depp is my friend.
Three or four years ago I had a dream that Johnny Depp came to our annual Metzner Fest summer country party upstate. He brought Vanessa and the kids and we all ate and danced and drank. Then Johnny and I started talking and we walked up to the Mill and stayed up all night telling each other stories, laughing and philosophizing. At one point I said, "Don't you think Vanessa is going to be upset that you have been with me all night?" and he said something like, "No, we've just been talking, and we've become great friends. She knows me. She doesn't mind." In the morning of the dream he got into my dad's big black Suburban truck and my dad drove him back to his hotel where Vanessa and the kids were staying. We waved goodbye not knowing if we would ever see each other again or get a chance to talk and laugh the night away.
When I woke up the next day in this real life I was in a really wonderful mood. I felt like I had made a new friend and connected with someone that I had always wanted to in a very special way, more special than if I had gotten to make out with him...I'm no homewrecker. Ever since then every time I see a picture of Johnny I smile and say "hey."
One time my sister Evyan was working with a photographer who was flying out to LA to shoot Johnny the next day. She asked him to bring me an autograph and he did even better than that.
I keep this photograph on my desk. I know that somewhere out there Johnny is sending me "all good."
I know: That my whole idea of family has changed drastically in the past three years with the death of my father and my divorce and the fact that I am now technically a "grown-up." I am 33 years old and have a 5 year old child and an apartment. I have seen most of my friends grow up and pop out babies and/or get married and/or divorced and/or remarried and/or have boyfriends and/or become successful, and/or famous and/or stay single and have kids etc... The idea of a family isn't a "Mom and Dad and a Baby makes three." In this day and age of "the future" there are families made up of two dads, and moms with boyfriends who have their own kids all living together, or tons of single parents raising kids on their own by choice or not.
It is an interesting phenomenon to grow up imagining an idea of family based on Disney movies, and fairy tale books and then to realize that love is nothing like that and when you grow up you don't turn into someone else who wears a suit and tie, or has a matching duvet and curtain set. I am still me, and my friends are still the same cool stylish exciting weirdos. But now they have kids. My friend and super talented professional photographer and mother Erin Patrice O'brien had the brilliant idea to do a photo shoot highlighting this phenomenon. We wanted to show that you can be broke, rich, stylish, gay, straight, single, famous, domestic partners, etc... and still be a family. Jam Magazine is interviewing the families that we chose and I will post the pics from our "Modern Family" shoot when they are published. Until then here is a sneak peak.
I know: That I am inspired by a lot of things from my childhood. I used to love to read comic books. I loved Archie and that whole gang, Katy Keene, and of course like any normal girl with a bunch of brothers, X-men, Excalibur, Daredevil and Spiderman. A few years ago I wanted to design a whole collection based on the clothing of Betty and Veronika with my sister Bega.
We tried to get it going and it was a lot hard work and fun, but we ended up having issues with licensing. Boring boring boring... But then last week I was looking at those old comics and loving them so. What style those girls had! so I decided to do a photo-shoot based on B and V.
Betty is poor, Veronika is rich, but they are both super cool and stylish and they are best frenemies because they are both in love with the same boy, Archie. I thought it would be cool to have a blonde and a brunette model and dress them in almost the same outfits, but style them differently. Veronika would be more put together and wealthy looking, while Betty was the more bohemian, funky version. The photographer Aria Isadora had the idea of doing poses that were almost symmetrical or even the exact same poses as each other like these:
The hair stylist Carolyn Riley and makeup artist Laura Stiassni had the idea for hair and makeup to do a contemporary version of a fifties style ponytail and bright almost cartoony makeup.
Here are some pics from the shoot. More to come when they are all edited.
