Backstage
Blooming marvellous — behind the scenes of this issue’s fashion shoot in Kent
It’s not often that Esquire sees fit to call on the services of a floral designer, but for the bucolic fashion shoot in this issue, introducing the autumn/winter 2021 menswear collections starting on p108, it was felt that an expert in attractive flora (she’s called Holly, appropriately, and that’s her, second from left, looking at her phone) was needed as back-up for nature herself.
The team (from left: photographer Roni Ahn; floral designer Holly Hmiddouche; groomer Moe Mukai; photographer’s assistant Valerie Hsieh; Esquire fashion director Catherine Hayward; photographer’s assistant Vanessa Ng; Esquire fashion assistant Dan Choppen; model King Owusu; photographed by Esquire’s art director, Lisa Barlow-Wright) decamped from London to the Garden of England for the day, shooting at two neighbouring farms in Kent: Castle Farm, and Lower Austin Farm, both famous for their fields of lavender, and set up camp in a barn, hastily repurposed as a dressing room cum grooming salon.
To ornament the abundance of natural attractions on offer (also farmed on site: cattle, hops, wheat, barley, peas...), Holly brought marigolds, eryngos, sweet peas, chocolate cosmos, lavender and oxeye daisies.
Perhaps as a reaction to the dark days in which they were conceived and designed, many of the clothes in this new season’s collections are distinguished by exuberant colours, and an air of romance pervades in anticipation, we hope, of a brighter future.
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