The storm before the calm

A glimpse at the carnage that lead up a surprisingly relaxing London Fashion week

Preparations and multi tasking the weeks before LFW


This is a photo from the Freemasons' Hall in the room where the exhibition took place. This is a before picture. It's an amazing building and a great space. Every detail around us had a story and a purpose. Very Da Vinci Code. My grandpa was a Freemason so I am very into their history and it felt fitting to be launching my business from this building. Gramps would have liked that I think.


Back on the island as the CHARLOTTE TAYLOR chaos began snowballing through the Isle of Wight I found some great people who crazily wanted to jump on board and help me out.
One of these loonies was Becky Ball.
Becky lives in my village and also attends OAP yoga on Mondays (Apparently when they arrived late one time my dad clapped them in...smooth). Becky helped me out on a number of things:
1. Beckys' dad owns the local waxworks museum in our village (don't ask) which has just closed to be developed into flats. I was looking for stuffed birds to use in my lookbook photo shoot (don't ask) and low and behold it turns out that there are about 500 of them in my tiny village 100m down the road...of course why wouldn't there be.


The whole place was in fact a treasure trove filled with historic clothes, artifacts, cars and of course wax people.

I'm not gonna lie, I was a bit creeped out when a lonely head could be found left on a stray table eyeballing me as I weighed up the pro's and cons of orange bird vs green bird. The whole scenario was weird yet somehow typically and beautifully Isle of Wight.


2. Cakes
Becky in her spare time is a cake making extraordinaire.
She made me Penguin cakes and mini bite sized cakes in the colours of my collection for all my LFW guests. I'm sure you'll agree they're pretty special.
Becky's services are available for hire and you can contact her at:
beckball@googlemail.com or on +44 (0)7733 104 894

I will put more photos of the cakes at the show in my next blog.


It was then onto the photoshoot up in London, which I have talked about before so I won't bore you. I hope you agree though that the shots are lovely and the styling and make up are 'lush' (i said this a lot on the shoot and no I am not 12, my brother just refers to me as his delusional sister so I guess you all do the same). Great team and great result.


Rachel with the colour card which we shot with before each shoot to make sure all colours in each frame were coherent with the 'real' colours of the clothes.
I'm at her feet..."tweaking".


Camilla doing her bit..


Ellie and Camilla perfecting the Penguin print headscarf...love.

It was then back to the studio to get the photos sent off to the printers, finish the collection and prepare for LFW.

One word sums it up.

Messy

Fun but messy