The Missing Month…

I feel like a lapsed blogger: instead of uploading on a daily/hourly basis, I have been working so much, that between prepping, editing, mood-boarding (let’s make that a verb!), styling and shooting, that other than being mother to a 2 year old and planning our imminent move to Muswell Hill, that I literally haven’t had much time to write.  There hasn’t been much time to tend our allotment either, though I did bake a filo pastry potato and spinach pie this morning – with spinach and red onion from the plot.  When you wake up at 6am, as we now do, thanks to my son’s body clock, by 8am, life feels positively brunch-like…

The past month has taken me from selling a car load of loot at Chiswick car boot sale, to styling a huge campaign for the Dubai market, then Hamburg for the Ligne Roset campaign and now prepping for  an commercial in London.  The Dubai shoot was for Mall of the Emirates, which involved 12 huge boxes of designer clothes as prep, fine jewellery galore, rows of Manolos, Ginas and Charlotte Olympia shoes and masses of time on skype in briefing meetings.  I shot the campaign in Prague, that beautiful mad city, which decided to be 36*c the week I was there, in a studio with no a/c.  Liam my assistant was so fried when the producers closed the windows to keep the cold air in, while he was steaming the clothes, that by mid-day I embarked upon an open window intervention!  The shoot looks amazing, we had such fantastic clothes, that I can’t wait to share it when it is released.

 

 

(Photos all courtesy of Jozef Pavleye)

Back to London, for time with my son and husband, we went to Alma Street Festival that Sunday, our local street party, then into prepping for the Ligne Roset campaign, which I styled last week in Hamburg.  Being a huge Ligne Roset fan: our sitting room hosts several pieces, I was delighted to be asked to style for them.  I chose a really vibrant, fresh silhouette which the client loved, good times.  Sunday might have been recovery from The Stones at Glastonbury for some, for my family it was time for a street festival, or two.  First stop: Amwell Street Fete, which was fantastic, exactly what a local street party should be: I bumped into the lovely Sharon Dowsett make up artist supremo and her husband Tony sipping pimms and selling an amazing array of Victoriana from their stall.  The stalls were a ridculous feast of artisan bargains and vintage treasures: Jeremy bought some homemade strawberry jam for £2, while I found a gorgeous blue silk velvet and lace late 1930’s dress (bias cut with a hint of Mildred Pierce around the shoulders) for £10 from Pennies Vintage (http://penniesvintage.com/).  Dukey got his groove on at the bouncy castle and I redecorated rooms in my imagination several times over, as I swooned at a sofa from Timorous Beasties and fabrics at various stalls.  Hampstead Summer Festival, which we went onto, was fun, but Amwell Street Fete was simply heaven: sunshine and sweetness, urban yet urbane, local and lovely.

And now?  Now I am prepping for an advert I am styling at the weekend and waiting for the heads up on shoes and socks!..