Persephone

A couple of months ago  I was fortunate to be invited to Amaury Blow's recreation of the 1815 Brussels ball at Berkeley castle in Gloucestershire, the dress code of course was strictly regency so with this in mind I got in contact with the queen of historical inspired fashion; Brighton based designer Joanne Flemming to find out if she might possibly have a suitably Jane Austinesq frock she would be willing to lend me for the evening.

But being the superstar she is she went one better and agreed to run me up something for the occasion, so I thought what better way to repay her for her kindness than to do a shoot with said dress afterwards.
With this in mind I managed to assemble an amazing crew comprising of photographer Scott Rylander  artist/producer/general creative genius Laura Clarke as art director and Strange fruit front woman Jenny Maxwell stepping into the role of model. We were a little unsure of how to display the dress to its best advantage until Laura suggested the use of a pomegranates as a prop, which conjured up images of the Greek myth of the goddess Persephone.  (Persephone the goddess of the harvest who was stolen away by Hades the god of the underworld, Persephone is so distraught by this she refuses to eat, eventually Hades brings her her favorite fruit a pomegranate and she eats 6 seeds of it.  Meanwhile on earth all the plants and crops are dying and so Zeus the king of the gods went to Hades to ask for her return, he initially refuses but eventually makes a bargin with Zeus that for the 6 seeds Persephone ate she will remain in the underworld for 6 months of the year and return to earth for the earth 6 to make the crops grow - and so the ideas of seasons comes about.)

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Anyway when I told mentioned this shoot to Brussels ball organiser  Amaury Blow, he very kindly agreed to lend us not only one of his beautiful vignettes made specially for the ball ( this one featured a very gothic stuffed raven)  but also a truly amazing one off Philip Treacy Mask, which came with its own escort - the wonderful Bernard Coughlan who asked if we could please be careful with it as it was worth more than his car! So despite tiptoeing around it as if it was nuclear bomb I think we managed to use the mask to great dramatic effect for the hell sequence of the Persephone tale. Over all it was a fantastic if slightly nerve wracking shoot and I'm pleased to report that both Joanne and Amaury were please with the results, Amaury in particular is planning to use them to help publicize a very exciting sounding arts based event he is planning for early next year for more info you can visit his website http://www.amauryblow.co.uk/

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