Diary of a photoshoot

Michelle and Jacques in action...

If you follow us on Instagram, you might have spotted a few behind-the-scenes photos from our shoot in Cape Town recently for our high-summer catalogue. Having cancelled last year’s photo shoot due to Covid, this January I was determined to make it happen, despite our busy work schedule meaning we could only be out of the office for a brief time. “Is it really worth going for just two days’ shooting?” John asked, when it was confirmed that South Africa was off the UK’s travel ‘red list’ and it was safe to rebook our previously cancelled flights. “Definitely!” I replied. “For colour to really work in the catalogue we need sea, sand and sunshine. Let’s make it happen!”

This year, in the absence of our brilliant photographer Ben, our hair and make-up artist Nina was good enough to recommend a Belgian photographer called Jacques who lives in Cape Town and has bags of Spring energy and enthusiasm. He was joined by Jeanette, a stylist friend of Nina’s and the sister-in-law of the owner of the location house (how I love all these connections!). And it was great to be back working with our beautiful Spring model Michelle (now a mum of three, ranging in years from seven to two), who literally smiles all day long, loves our clothes (she’s always saying the nicest things about the quality of our fabrics) and whose short haircut is ideal when you’re fighting the famously fierce Cape Town wind! With just one model for our high summer shoot, Michelle was the perfect choice for flooding our website with sunshine. Finally – and in a first for Kettlewell – we booked the Summer model/actor Stefan from Berlin to model our very small intro to men's T-shirts (he laughingly told us that when he first went on our website he’d assumed we’d made a mistake booking him because he could only see womenswear!). As well as helping out Jacques and John, obligingly cutting up fruit salad for lunch and generally being a thoroughly nice person to have around, Stefan went straight to the top of my favourite person list when he said ours was the nicest shoot he had ever worked on, and was just like being part of one big family.

Today, going through the colourful images back at Kettlewell HQ, and asking myself whether it was worth travelling so far for a two-day shoot with all the covid travel forms and tests that entailed, I have to say yes, 100 per cent. We arrived home safely with all the blue skies and turquoise seas we’d hoped for, and plenty of colourful inspiration for your summer holiday wardrobes. And, you know me, I can’t resist a challenge; when you’ve overcome all the hurdles and it all comes together, it’s the best feeling. I just can’t wait to share it with you all when the catalogue comes out in May.

Celebrating the sunshine!