Wet season
Clothes that look rained on and dried wrong.
- Type
- Editorial concept
- Status
- Not yet shot
- Links to
- Aquascaping, Shadwell Basin
- Colour
- Bog, olive, lichen, fog
- Mood
- Damp, heavy, after the storm
Wool that has shrunk on the body, silk with water rings, knit gone heavy with rain, fur that has dried in spikes. The clothes have been through weather and come back changed.
It starts at Shadwell Basin, from Javier Galera’s photographs for Aquascaping, the exhibition I produced: people swimming under the signs that say not to. Here they get out of the water still dressed.
It is a fabric story first. It shows how materials behave, which is what brands look for in a stylist.
Three kinds of damage, one per look: one garment structurally wrong (Kawakubo), one with an altered surface (Chalayan, Margiela), one that seems to work normally. Wool contracts, silk remembers water, waxed cotton resists. The strongest frame may be a completely dry model beside the water, in clothes that look like they survived a flood.
Bog
#33332D
Olive drab
#716D56
Lichen
#A1A086
Fog
#C2BFB1
Wet stone
#D3D7D7
Mist
#E8E9E6
Moss
#4F5B2E
accent
Pulled from the pixels of the 20 references. The accent is chosen by hand.
Mock-ups made in ChatGPT to test each look before a shoot. They are not photographs.
- Casting
- Open-water swimmers from London swimming clubs, plus one model
- Location
- Shadwell Basin (with permission) and an old tiled bathroom or laundrette
- Light
- Overcast daylight; one low winter sun shot
- Hair, make-up
- Wet hair, bare skin, no lipstick
- Practical
- Spray bottles, a water tank, towels and robes for the cast
- Wide shot of figures on the dock edge
- Full-length dripping
- Macro: water rings on silk
- Collapsed over a wall
- Bathroom, high angle from the corner