Part I: Developing a Line for a Photoshoot

Two weekends ago, on April 17th, a few friends and I collaborated on a lingerie photoshoot. All of us are entrepreneurs in our own way. It all started with my friend Kim, who brought everyone together.

Kim is a make-up artist extraordinaire, who introduced me to Teresa, the photographer behind Photography by Teresa. Teresa had the idea for us to collaborate on a photoshoot and invited her friend Stephanie, who creates beautiful floral arrangements and owns the business Fleur & Lux. We decided that we wanted to go with two themes: Urban Cinderella Meets Spring Bride and a darker, Avant Garde look. Another friend, Diana, volunteered to model and I reached out to my cousins Tasha, Sade, and Raquel to model too.

We created concepts boards for each theme on Pinterest, and pinned everything that we liked. The Urban Cinderella/Bride theme was floral, bright, springy, and airy – everything from wedding dresses to a Dita Von Teese’s tutu of flowers were pinned on this board.

The edgy Avant Garde board was a completely different concept – with strappy bras, buckled leather harnesses, and black gloves.The next step was to sketch and re-sketch what designs I wanted the girls to wear. I created one lingerie set for each theme, using my own designs as well as patterns I love from Ohhhlulu. After I was more or less happy with the pieces I drew for each theme, I headed to Fabric Row in downtown Philly to buy the fabric.

Then came the hard part – deciding which fabric went with which set. I must have re-arranged the fabric swatches at least 10 times, no exaggeration.

It was also difficult to decide which model to assign to which lingerie sets. At this point I had all of their measurements, so I did my best to show off their best, ahem, assets and create beautiful pieces that they would love and feel confident in.

Sewing the garments was the fun part, but it took a lot of work! I will cover that in the next post.