The Time I Had To Style A Style Icon...

And the only time I have ever been starstruck and tongue-tied with a celebrity. All the behind-the-scenes goss about the time I flew to NYC to shoot Sofia Coppola.

Some of the published images (in the July 2013 issue of Red magazine) from the shoot

I got the call from the Bookings Editor at Red magazine in April 2013 when I was their Contributing Senior Fashion Editor. I wasn’t based in the office, but I had a contract with the mag to style a certain amount of stories a year. It was a great gig - I loved the people, I could come and go as I pleased, and also still work with all my commercial clients. My contract didn’t include covers - covers were never my favourite thing, I just found them really restrictive and uncreative - they required a different skill set, which neither interested nor inspired me. Plus, when you’re shooting a cover for a big glossy magazine, you are so locked in with how you can style them, because it would almost always (depending on the magazine) have to be one of the biggest advertisers featured (head-to-toe) on a cover, plus you had to navigate the tricky tightrope between your brief from your Editor, Fashion Director, and ‘the talent’s’ team - Publicist, PR, hair and makeup (who usually work with them regularly), the photographer, and of course, ‘the talent’ themselves. A lot of opinions, restrictions, and diplomacy skills and negotiating tactics at play. Let’s just say it was tricky. And I always found these shoots really stressful because with covers comes a lot of pressure, as of course, the cover needs to sell the magazine. Anyway, this is possibly another newsletter in itself (would you be interested?), and I am already veering off on a tangent - I just can’t help myself. Back to this cover shoot..