let's get serious

This model was in the Holly Fulton show, which I loved. She told me her name and I thought I wrote it down, but we were on the Strand while I was trying to get to the Topshop Unique show in time. I had just found the bus with London Fashion Week splashed all over the side, but it was stationary, and empty. 'Hello sir, are you going to Waterloo for the Topshop show?' I asked the dour bus driver, who said 'Yes,' then he looked at my Photographer and Press passes, and said 'but this bus is only for the Buyers.' I looked around and it was clearly empty - and the show was starting in 15 minutes, and the walk alone would take at least that long, so I gave him my saddest puppy dog look, combined with a slight raising of the eyebrow to indicate, AW, come ON, have a heart, buddy, but he wasn't buying it.

'Okay, can you please tell me where the Press bus leaves from, then?' I asked, trying a new tact. 'Oh that's across the street,' he said, pointing, 'But it left five minutes ago.' (In other words, a few minutes after the start of our conversation.) Then I resorted to begging, but he held firm. Buyers, only. I was on the verge of offering him a twenty, but he looked like the type who would happily arrest me for attempted bribery. Sometimes you just gotta let it go.

So I started running. But first, that's when I saw this nice model, and we had a quick little chat and shoot, and I didn't even notice til now when I'm looking at the shot, what a great little nail detail she had going.



Then.. oh! I almost forgot the part where I tried again to find the bus - because the Buyer Driver said it might be circling round the block if the bridge is closed (huh?) and while I was, and thinking maybe, just maybe, the Gods would be on my side and there's be a taxi, but who did I see but my old friend Scott, the Sartorialist, ('I shot the Sartorialist', September 2009). He was standing in the street, watching me. 'Are you going to Topshop?' I asked frantically. 'Maybe', he said.

'Do you have an invitation?', the Sartorialist asked me.

'Yes,' I replied.

'Can you show it to me?', he asked. Meanwhile, the clock was ticking, and there were no buses or taxis in sight, and we weren't getting any younger. 'Of course,' said I, opening my handbag and handing him my ticket, because you don't say no to the Sartorialist. 'Good,' he said, 'because I want to send it to Garance.' (He pronounced it, btw, not GAR-ance, but in a Frenchy way, GarANCE). So here we are, in the street, no taxi, no bus, it's 2:55, and I'm quipping brightly to him about 'Well, I might not be shot by the Sartorialist, but at least my invitation is!'

Either he didn't find me funny, or he was concentrating on shooting it with his phone and sending it to Garance, but in any case, he was done with me, and off I sprinted across the bridge.



At which point I saw this girl, above, with two cute guys with big photographic equipment. They were trying to hail a cab, but there weren't any. I'm gonna just try hoofing it, I told them, but she pointed to her shoes - which were fabulous - but had mile high heels. We exchanged sympathetic glances, I wished them luck - they promised to pick me up if they found a taxi - and I ran to the old Eurostar station, which I'd been to last year. But I still got really lost. And ran in - leaving a line queuing outside - and wouldn't you know: it was starting late. They had really great beef stew (which I'm making now, btw: I've still got this cold/flu/bug) on mashed potatoes, which I inhaled gratefully, and then I saw the girl from the bridge. They'd ended up going on foot, after all, but they, too made it in time!

I didn't see the Sartorialist inside. Or, Garance. But I did see him after, outside. Alone. With his camera. Watching, with a serious face on. And then I walked back, across Waterloo bridge. Next to me on the bridge was the Buyer Bus, returning slowly in the traffic, to Somerset House. It was empty.



My last shot in the Serious Series is my new friend Carlota, aka Carrottline. I love her look. So serious. She's been leaving wonderful comments as long as I can remember, and she's got a lovely blog, but this was the first we actually met. She's in London now for school, and we're planning to meet for a coffee in a few weeks when she's settled in. She wasn't having a great time at fashion week - she didn't know anyone yet - but we've all been there, and know how it feels. Everyone has to start somewhere.

We've had to cancel a lovely dinner at our friends' tonight cause of this bug. But I've made some killer gingerbread and am drinking the best home remedy: fresh lemon, ginger, and honey tea. And if you want to laugh, click on 'I'm not talking', and follow instructions.

p.s. Big thank you to my friend Estelle, Serendipity 2307! The model is, and I quote: 'Sandra aka Suzie Bird very famous frenchie model!' And E should know: she's French, and she's a model, and she's modelled in Paris, so there you go.

stars and stripes: flash

This year, Topshop held their Unique catwalk show in a truly spectacular space in East London. It's hard to convey the contradiction of these kind of events - I know this from my brother's world, the music world- you get this kind of 'insider' moments and then suddenly it's like a feeding frenzy - the Papps - who are just, after all, doing their job. There's something about the lightbulbs going off: it's freaky and a little scary.

I really hate flash. Even as a kid, birthday parties, it made my eyes tear, and mainly, for me it doesn't produce the kind of photographs I want to create. It's.. hard. Sandra (5 inch and up) was explaining that I need a proper kind of flash, one of those attachment thingies, or to put a card in front of it, but it was kind of dark in the space before the show started, and everything was so blurry, so I needed it (altho I love the blurs: I was more fixated on getting a shot of the girl in the red tights and possibly Christopher Kane skirt, than the celebrities). Alexa and the others were so kind about posing for flash and all, but later, after the show (and I can't WAIT to show you shots of the show - later and tomorrow) I happened to find myself in a quiet space in the entrance, and it was just Pixie and me, each texting our friends along the lines of 'where are you'? 'I'm here, where are YOU?' and I said to her:



'It must be so weird, being you. I mean, don't you just sometimes want to tell everyone to just STOP IT?'

And she glanced around to see that no one was listening and just gave me this sheepish smile of relief, and kinship, and said yes. And with that, I didn't take her photo, I simply left her alone.

when i say jump

I guess I should explain the jumping thing: when I started this blog about 18 months ago, just doing street style was a challenge for me as an artist. My photography up til then had been quiet, 'fine art': still lives, landscapes, a kind of photo-collage using myself, shot by me with a timer... to approach strangers, explain myself and why I was doing this was a real hurdle to overcome because altho I'm rather chatty, I'm also inherently shy.




BUT.. as an artist, I need to move forward and grow. And by last week at London Fashion Week... let's just say the whole idea of shooting fashionable people standing around hoping to be made famous by bloggers was wearing a bit thin for me. And shooting models is way easier than shooting fish. Fish move around. Models, especially after doing one of these shows, are generally hanging around, moving fairly slowly.

EXCEPT when you ask them to jump.



Why do I occasionally ask people to jump for my shots? Partly to keep things interesting, partly for the challenge of catching them in motion.. partly to amuse myself, partly to break the ice.. sometimes (not in this case) I feel the person is really quite photogenic but they're putting on that bored pouty face because they think that's what people want, and I ask them to jump simply to shake things up. Literally.

In hindsight, this fabulous model from the Unique show was really quite a sport. A generous, lighthearted spirit. I mean, she had just done a really difficult catwalk show in death defying heels, on the old Waterloo station Eurostar tracks.. most of the girls were just finding it difficult to stand up, let alone jump around.



It happened quite impulsively. Shini and I were about to leave - she had just said hi to Tommy Tan - we each got a similar shot of him with the model (damn I wish I remembered her name! She told me.. plum forgot*) - you should see Shini's shot, she had TWO extraterrestrial lights in hers - and suddenly, while I was shooting her, I just asked her to jump.

*Two people so far have told me this is Dree Hemingway, great granddaughter of Ernest. That sounds about right: I think she said her name was Dree. Okay, it's worse then: I made DREE HEMINGWAY, Ernest's great granddaughter, jump up and down having just completed a catwalk show. What is my problem. Just because I was feeling a bit of creative malaise.

I mean, REALLY. What would Ernest say.




Now I'm trying to figure out which one she was on the catwalk.. this might be her. I can't tell. I've been spending hours playing some kind of matching game with my photos, and I'm going a bit cross eyed, and Mr. Dot is getting hungry, and so I am.




I mean, we're talking a SEA of models in that show. And I shot every one. When they came out for the end, it was like an army of amazons walking down along the train tracks. A beautiful army of frizzy haired amazonians on crazy tall lucite platform heels.






It was only today, looking through, that I saw the shot I caught of her minutes after she did her jumping shots. The face she was making at a friend. This is someone with a real zest for life, someone who doesn't take herself, or the madness that is the fashion world, all that seriously.

I just can't believe that a) she told me her name was Dree - several times - and I didn't put two and two together b) I bossed her around like that. But she was a good sport about it.

olivia olivia

Okay, it's time for the Olivia story. I know it's going to be so stupid and anti-climatic: it was just at the time I did the Julia post ('being Julia'). It was all at the same event, Day Two (Saturday), at the Topshop Unique show at Waterloo Station, and there were just so many photos and stories from that day I said I'd tell you the Olivia story another time and then I just got so busy... and I just can't tell anything simply, but I'll try.

Last February, I met and photographed Olivia Palermo ('deer in the headlights') but I didn't know who she was. (I'm always meeting famous people that I often don't know are famous: one of these days remind me to tell you the Hugh Grant story). The City was already on one of the channels here but it wasn't in our listings.. I eventually started watching the show and I saw what people meant about her character but frankly, I didn't think she was bitchy. Maybe it's because I met her and liked her so I"m biased, or maybe it's because that other one - the big blonde - the one who's actually supposed to be nice.. but I don't think she is. I think she's kind of manipulative by playing the victim. But that's just me. I haven't watched the show much, frankly.




Anyway, because of the strange situation I found myself in (as explained in the Julia story) I found myself just kind of hanging around because I hadn't gone to the little party that Shini had gone to (I had a ticket, I just had gone straight to the photo pit) so I'm just standing around, waiting for it to start, taking photos of people, shoes...





... watching Olivia talk to the famous Telegraph fashion journalist, Hillary Alexander (that's another story)..



and finally I introduced myself again, said we met last February.




She seemed really pleased to see me, seemed convincingly to have remembered me (or it could be good acting), and yet, like in February, it felt like this kind of friendly moment passed between us: like she was relieved that I wasn't treating her like a strange creature, an object to be Papp'd, and just that quick nanosecond moment of 'we're all just normal people' before she got swept into more photos, more taped interviews..

..then the show began, and I'm sitting there next to her (separated by one person)..



.. with a view of her hands on my right, like Julia's was on my left..






..more shots of the show, and then after, I was talking with Julia and left Olivia to the hoards and masses, and that was it, really. Then back outside to the craziness of shooting civilians and models with Shini and the other photographers (and yes, that's another post, or two, or seven).

Not really much of a story, is it? I mean, hardly worth spinning you along this long, and I apologise.


Okay, so this is where the story starts veering into Implausibility Land: my lovely friend Natayla (editor of the online fashion magazine Its Fashion Week) asked me what the 'Olivia' story was. I said I'd tell her when I saw her, it was no big deal. Meanwhile we're both running round to different shows, trying to find each other.. at one point (and this is all within like 48 hours) she ends up in Kurt Geiger, and who should she see alone in the shop with no one around apart from what seemed to be a 'minder', but.. Olivia herself. So she introduced herself and took this shot:



Now Nat also felt that Olivia Palermo, the person, is really nice, sweet, warm. So which is it? Is she a really good actress who can play a bitch well, but in real life acts nice? Or is she THAT good an actress that she's really a bitch and just acts nice in public? Frankly, I don't think anyone's that good an actress.



Anyway, enough on the Olivia stuff. Fame is such a weird thing: there are so many lovely people I meet and shoot all the time, and they could just as easily be famous, they're just not. Yet.

I think I like this shot most of all, when Olivia Palermo, the actress, the celebrity, is simply being a human being. All these shots are unretouched and if you look closely you will see it: a spot. A teeny, tiny spot, granted, but it's there. Proof that she's just as human as you or me, after all.

being julia

This is Julia Restoin Roitfeld, the 29 year old daughter of Carine, editor of Paris Vogue. I ended up a sitting between her and Olivia Palermo yesterday at the Topshop Unique show. By accident.


Granted, I was sitting on the floor. And I was invited to the show, held this year in old Eurostar part of Waterloo Station. But as this year I have the special photographers' pass this year, I thought I'd try to be one of the guys in the pit: I'm entitled, after all. There were actually some girls there, too, especially a tiny cute one with a tripod but no camera. These bodyguard type guys in blue ties were being great about reigning us into area behind tape, and one pointed out that the fence we were leaning on wasn't secure (the train tracks were 10 inches past the fence). Then he announced that the little girl with the tripod was the only one with the 'Topshop camera', and to clear her view of the show. And I was basically standing in front of her: if I moved the way I tend to during shows, the Topshop streaming would consist of a big hot pink blurry torso that was me.



So I asked someone in charge, politely, if I could sit in the aisle and pointed to the first space. She was lovely and said sure.

Then it turned out that I was sitting between the front row seats with Olivia Palermo to my right, and Julia to my left (more about the sweet Olivia who I met last February in a future post: I got some great shots of her, too, but this is Julia's post, and it's taking forever to tell this story as it is). It was surreal, yet normal, to see them politely greet each other and chat: 'Where are you going after this?' 'Paris'. Of course.





The show was fabulous, by the way. Lots of ethereal seventies influences, fabulous shoes and hair: really gorgeous setting, fun retro music that I was actually singing along to. I'll post more shots next time, promise.



These are Julia's hands: so graceful and well groomed. I watched her clap and in the midst of all that was going on, thought about the Zen line.. something about one hand clapping.




My father used to say, we don't choose our families. I was very lucky with mine: in our own way, in our town, we were held in high esteem as a family, and we understood the responsibilities, and the privileges, that come with that. We don't choose the situations we are born into.

Or, perhaps we do. The Hindus say we do. Feel we're here on this earth, with our own set of challenges, and our family and place of origin of course informs those challenges. Today I saw firsthand what it must like to be someone like Julia.








Don't get me wrong: I'm sure she loves her life. When I asked to take her photo after, she was sweet and polite and patiently waited while I tried to figure my own camera out: I forgotten to turn it on. She's clearly a happy, well brought up girl. It just started me thinking, waiting quietly for the show to start, that someone like Julia Restoin Roitfeld's life is no easier, or harder, or happier, or sadder, than the girl serving the champagne, say, or the girl with the camera in the photographers' pit, or the girl running around in a maxi with a walkie talkie device in her head.

It's just different, that's all.



I left her - and Nicola, and Lilly, and Olivia - as they were being swallowed up by the circus, and went outside, into the sunshine.

p.s. All photos are mine: if you'd like to use them, please ask me first. Thank you.

pretty fierce

Fierce shoes @ the Unique show. I believe they're Rupert Sanderson: can anyone confirm?

. . .

Wouldn't you know it: Anonymous came thru again. WHO IS THIS PERSON? It's like my Fashion Fairy Godmother.

According to my Anonymous Source: "It's actually the "Piccadilly" by Rupert Sanderson for Karl Lagerfeld AW2009 runaway show. Electrifying stuff!

Look out for the shoes at the Karl Lagerfeld show on Sunday 7th. It's Rupert's 3rd season for Karl."

It's not just Anonymous, Style Slicker identified them as Sanderson, but said it's the Kit Kat. I'm looking at both and they don't seem to be either. I see his shop is near where I'll be on Friday, I'm going to go and get to the bottom of this. Watch this space, Kittens!

life in the circus: nicola roberts @ topshop unique

After the Unique show: I thought this redhead looked familiar.. correct me if I'm wrong, but this is Nicola Roberts from Girls Aloud, is that right?



I love the electric blue of that stoic guy's tie. He's not there for the fashion, I'm guessing. I think it's Kevin Costner in the Bodyguard.



In the background, poor Olivia doing another interview, and that teeny tiny grey head at the top is Pixie, who was unwittingly blocking my view of the show. Bless her cotton socks.

unique pixie head pics (no one puts baby in the corner)

The Topshop Unique catwalk show in London was held in the basement of this fabulous white-painted space - a flower hall in Covent Garden. Fabulous space and wonderful crowd. The 'catwalk' snaked thru the crowd - which was vast - and was marked by these kind of wood chips. The models were styled as jungle animals (I can't stop singing 'If I were King of the Jungle' as I post this) and it was all just perfect, except this one head kept getting in the way of me getting good shots. After a while I just figured, screw it: I'll leave the good shots to the professionals, you'll forgive me if I don't post clear shots, and I just relaxed & enjoyed the show.



It wasn't til later - til the show ended and the REAL circus began - the media frenzy - that I realised that it was little Pixie Geldorf's head, blocking my view.



And tho I didn't notice it at the time, Olivia Palermo was just in front of me, on the left.. and I spotted some familiar faces across the catwalk aisle.. Kate Lamphor, who I'd just met & shot, at Somerset House..



and of course, the Sart, aka Scott, who I shot last summer: no one puts baby in the corner.