Creative Collaboration

Douglas Young’s artistic talent, wacky ideas and appetite for fun ensured our cover shoot was a memorable one

his may sound like a cliché, but I feel like royalty today,” Douglas Young said with a chuckle during our photo shoot. “I’m usually on the other side of the lens, having to worry about compositions and clashing colours, so it’s rather fabulous to be able to sit back and let someone else do all the hard work for me.” Douglas may have been the star of the show but we still put his artistic talent to good use throughout the day, making him paint a glass prop with swirling pink and yellow patterns for one shot, fashion a wall of Post-it notes for another, and create a paintsplattered purple backdrop for a third.

He also helped fashion editor Justine Lee with some of the styling. “Douglas was such fun to work with as he really was up for anything,” Justine said. “Not a lot of cover stars are happy to cover themselves in paint but Douglas certainly was—i was more worried about the clothes getting ruined than anything else but luckily he was very careful. I also really appreciated his thoughts on how to style the more irreverent G.O.D. pieces with the highfashion clothes I’d sourced.”

But even creative geniuses are entitled to a few minutes of rest so, while we finished our sushi lunch, Douglas nodded off in the corner of the studio. A triple espresso and a diverse playlist that included songs by The Rolling Stones, Katy Perry and Pharrell Williams quickly brought him back to life and before we knew it, our photographer was calling “It’s a wrap!” and we were cleaning away piles of Postit notes, brightly coloured paper and empty paint cans. “That was such fun,” said Douglas as we all said our goodbyes outside the studio. “Can we do it all again tomorrow?”

See the full story on page 214. “I’M USUALLY ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE LENS, SO IT’S RATHER FABULOUS TO BE ABLE TO SIT BACK AND LET SOMEONE ELSE DO ALL THE HARD WORK FOR ME”