Inside the Studio: The Making of Portraits of a Lady

The Portraits of a Lady editorial was my last big project of 2019 and I’m ecstatic over the results!  I already shared various images from this project on my Instagram and Facebook pages because they were part of the launch of my new Sylphide collection and promotion for my holiday trunk shows.  Now that I’m well settled into the rhythm of the new year and my daughter is back in preschool, I wanted to share the story of how Portraits of a Lady came to be.   

This past November I had the pleasure of collaborating with my wonderful Glam Squad better known as photographer Julie Stanley (JuleImages), model Jeanette Thevenin, hair stylist Brad Lewis and make-up artist Rob Thoma.  The 5 of us have a blast working together and it was great fun to get our creative minds in Julie’s photo studio again.

Photoshoot Concept

The concept for Portraits of a Lady was to feature various pieces from my Sylphide collection to create the look of a ballerina off-duty or fresh off the stage from her performance.  This idea for this photoshoot came to me while I was designing Sylphide and bringing it to life took almost two years. Sylphide is inspired by the twinkle of starlight on snow as seen by prima ballerina Marie Taglioni when she danced under the stars on a winter’s night in Russia in 1835, so we wanted the style of this editorial to be glamorous but still natural looking.

Styling the Shoot

As with all of our Glam Squad projects, every detail was carefully considered.  We selected the larger jewelry pieces because they would really pop against the sheer white trench coat, chocolate-brown satin slip dress, and sheer cinnamon shawl I pulled from my personal wardrobe.  Rob used just a touch of foundation and powder on Jeanette’s alabaster skin and accentuated her blue eyes with soft golden and copper eyeshadow.  The slightest bit of peachy shimmer lip gloss was used to enhance her natural lip color and to add a touch of shine.  Jeanette has a gorgeous amount of red hair and Brad styled it in loose curls with a minimal amount of product.  (Tip: Hair that has a lot of styling products in it doesn’t move well during shoots and can look greasy, clumpy or crunchy in photos.)  Over the course of the shoot, Brad was inspired to change Jeanette’s hairstyle from down and loose to an elegant up-do to better show-off the jewelry pieces and each new style he created was a perfect fit for the different designs.

Photography

We shot everything in Julie’s beautiful spacious studio in Lakewood, Ohio.  Julie uses a camera tethered to her laptop so we could see the images as she was shooting and make any adjustments as needed.  After a few test shoots and minimal hair and make-up touch ups, photographing the 5 looks went really smoothly.  She shot each look as horizontal and vertical images with slight differences between the two, because it’s nice to have both options available for use.

The beauty about truly collaborating with amazing creative people is the amount of friendship and trust you develop in one another. Julie, Jeanette, Brad and Rob are such wonderful artists and I’m so grateful for the incredible talent they brought to Portraits of a Lady.  These images are far more stunning than what I dreamed about while creating Sylphide at my workbench. I hope you enjoy these behind the scenes moments and love the final images as much as we do.