One dress luckily!
A portrait session with a difference and one sequin dress.
Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans. That’s what John Lennon once said. Well, we should have better listened to the famous musician. Instead, we landed after four months of planning and an eight-hour flight at JFK for a yoga-fashion photo-shoot in the Big Apple – without a model and just one cocktail dress in our luggage. The large suitcase with the dreamlike dress designs from Malschenberg’s fashion label “Kleiderglück” had to stay behind at Frankfurt Airport on short notice, as well as our model Klara. Life is too short to be upset about it. Might have been the Ex-Beatle’s casual comment.
“The King is dead, long live the King”. This was kind of our emergency plan. Stephanie Bezler, our styling professional, responsible for hair, make-up and wardrobe, and me didn’t want to look back to the hours spent with heart, sweat and tears to come up with a story and mood board, now to be unread and unseen. But we fell to work on a new fancy. New York, the city that never sleeps, with its legendary motives and never ending possibilities. And with a grain of good fortune we almost stumbled upon our new chance. In advance I had booked a ticket for an off-camera flash workshop with my friends Sven Krohn and Nikolaj Wiegard, there I met the German-Italian actress Maria DiFazio.
A remarkable face with crystal-clear blue eyes under unbridled, hazelnut brown curls and a head full of creative projects like a new stage play about Marlene Dietrich. I told her about our original plans and the inspiration ignited immediately and jumped back and forth like a ping-pong ball. Fond of the ideas, we arranged to meet again the next day.
One of the original shooting locations was the walkway and steps near Bethesda Fountain in Central Park. Maria, as a long time yoga fan with years of training, moved naturally and graciously into “Asanas” resembling strength and stability. Enthralled by the marvelous mood of the moment, we decided to meet again in SoHo early morning next day. H&M artist Stephanie Bezler wanted to work with Maria on her upcoming “Dietrich” role and the look of the twenties and thirties. This matched perfectly with the only fashion dress we had brought with us, the gold and bronze glimmering sequin cocktail dress by Kleiderglück. The hip and trendy neighborhood of SoHo, just a spitting distance off West-Broadway was our stage and location for a portrait shoot with a difference.
A woman on a time journey. The cobble stone streets of “old New York” with its long lost glamour of another era, but with modern and passionate interpretation and presentation. The magic of the moment, nothing planned in detail nor any time restraints, but with ease and love. Lennon was right again: You make your own dreams.
