Behind The Scenes: LA Swim Shoot

I’m not going to lie, sometimes my job is pretty awesome. Shooting our swim campaign in LA was definitely a highlight, one of those days where working for 14 hours straight is actually a pleasure. But what did we actually do? How do we create our campaigns? and who are the people behind it? 

This particular campaign was shot with up and coming film maker/photographer Peter, brother of equally talented Masha Karpushin - fans of the brand may remember Mashas illustrations gracing our playing cards and bondage rope packaging. We have a lot of love for this family.

Our day started at 7am from Peters house in the Hollywood Hills, where a swimming pool and a view from the roof of the Hollywood sign is standard practise. Nice. 

After laying out the swim, talking styling options with Clara and direction for hair and make-up with Meghan, Peter and I ran through our schedule and shot list for the day. Once make up and hair was achieved we fuelled up with some organic fruit with organic yoghurt and organic protein bars (Yes, this is LA, its either healthy, organic goodness or salty, processed badness - quite an enjoyable extreme) we headed up to the roof.

Peter on the roof!

Meghan our hair & make-up artist and Clara our stylist, LA style - dungarees are in.

It always takes a little while in any shoot to get into a rhythm, so we spent the morning trying lots of shots and angles and making our very lovely and resilient model Ellen comfortable whilst lying on gravel in a bikini and having water sprayed at her. She was blissfully up for it all, so we thought fuck it, lets take this up a notch - who needs Go Ape? Lets have some LA team bonding and attempt to scale up to a higher rooftop via a precarious ladder. Sounds easy right? Fine? Well, our plucky photographer decided to take the ladder on alone. Big mistake. I just wish we had some footage of it to show you, but because the ladder fell and Peter was hanging off the roof we decided to help him instead. Sorry.

Our film maker Scott chatting to Ellen.

Once we’d made it safely to the roof, I spent my time getting overexcited about seeing the Hollywood sign and quietly attempting the ladder in wedges and a long dress. Some photos were taken, a bit of filming done and we all made it safely back off the roof. 

After lunch (organic) and some shots in the beautiful turquoise pool at the house we cruised the neighbourhood looking for a suitable driveway. As you do. Once found, Ellen walked obligingly back and forth in front of a complete strangers house for a bit and we swiftly made our escape.

Ellen trying to acclimatise to the water...

We wanted to add some depth to the story and were inspired by the landscape of downtown LA, the signs, the sunshine and sky and so headed to a ‘quiet’ street with a gorgeous brick wall to shoot. The wall was a bloggers wet dream, so we arrived unsurprisingly to find someone taking shots for their blog, and a confusing selection of push bikes. It turned out that T-Pain and Classixx were also shooting their new music video, inspired by the Smiths. Vice did an article about it HERE

A very tolerant Ellen getting wet again!

After kindly letting us throw some water around, T-Pain did his video stuff and we got the roller skates out. Coolest roller skates I’ve even seen, black trainers with touches of copper by Oxelo, matching the hardware on our bikinis, gorgeous.

Clara’s amazing roller-skates.

We drove around some more, looking for the prime spot to shoot the next look, until we found the perfect donut shop. After buying some donuts and negotiating with some slightly unhinged locals with said donuts, Ellen whipped off her robe and walked like a pro, seemingly undaunted by a local meth head singing ‘girls on film’ whilst another splashed paint around on the sidewalk. Luckily an english accent can be the perfect distraction, so I chatted merrily whilst Peter got his shots. Aside form getting a bit of paint on my dress and someone requesting to inappropriately touch my ears, it was totally fine. I’m from London I said, I’ve travelled on a night bus. I’ve dealt with worse. 

The Donut shop, post ambush!

We drove and shot, until we could shoot no more. Everyone worked their little ‘butts’ off and we had lots of fun. Thanks so much to all of our LA Lascivious crew, Peter, Clara, Meghan, Scott and Ellen. Thank you also to Larissa Hadjio for the stunning visors (now sold in our online shop) and Bailey Nelson sunglasses (we tried them all on and fell in love).
We hope you like the results... 

See the full campaign HERE!