Summer, Autumn and Mi
It started as one of those ordinary Saturday mornings in Brighton: a casual coffee with friends turning into a full support mission for Slow Fashion Week at the Brighton Dome. I walked away with Dries Van Noten shoes, a hand-knitted pair of puff sleeves, and an extraordinary encounter: Summer.
Completely unassuming, they were descending the stairs like a living Roman porcelain figurine wrapped in an oversized tweed coat made by a local designer. After decades in film and TV casting, people-collecting is still an occupational reflex – tucking faces into mental pigeonholes until the right project appears. This time, it was relevant though. I knew instantly Summer belonged on the autumn cover of Brighton Curated magazine I’d been asked to shoot. The juxtaposition of this porcelain face and darker nature started to develop into an idea for the issue.
Not long after, an early Sunday morning, we drove up towards Devil’s Dyke to catch the first sunrays over the South Downs. Totally unexpectedly, we were greeted by a white, fluffy low-lying mist covering the entire valley. No location scout or production manager can summon that on cue. It was a gift from nature we clearly deserved.
We had to move fast. The sun was already cutting through the mist, threatening to burn it away within minutes. Out of the car with the camera, no makeup, no artificial light, just black feathers, straight into the sunrays – and bam. We didn’t know it yet, but there was the front cover.
Once the mist burnt away over the Downs, the light sharpened and the paragliders started arriving, we headed down into the woods exploring new backdrops.
Blending the dark feathers into the trees, the raven arrived on set and blew a completely different air into the pictures. I carted down the C-stand, rigged a flash head with a round softbox, we added a bit more makeup, changed the outfit and let creative flow take over once again. Summer walked between centuries in seconds: from a Roman sculpture to Jane Austen, from a vulnerable bird to Jim Morrison.
We had found Orlando.
