The Ritz London


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When The Leading Hotels of the World asked me to visit The Ritz to have an uncommon experience I knew instantly what I wanted to do.

Tea in the Palm Court

Tea at The Ritz is a much desired London experience. Like everything at the Ritz, it holds a prestigue that is greater than nearly every London hotel. I watched the well seasoned staff set up for tea the day of this shoot. The care and attention that goes into the laying of each table was stunning, I loved the whole experience. Obviously it was delicious (my team had to sample it naturally!) but tea at The Ritz is more than just the taste or the setting. It’s about the magical ambience, the unique experience of being somewhere completely one of a kind, world famous.

Seeing a little of the behind scenes workings at The Ritz gave me a new perspective on the hotel, an uncommon perspective I was fortunate to have seen. The Ritz is the perfect combination of tradition and modernity, like the true character of London. The Ritz is part of The Leading Hotels of World group, and these hotels share this incredible focus on the exceptional. On uncommon travel.

The Marie Antoinette Room

This beautiful room is just off the main hall of the hotel, unlike most event rooms (which are often to be found down three staircases and two corridors), Huge panelled mirror doors open into this decadent space. Rich fabrics, chandeliers, elaborate mouldings and cornices all within a gold, pink and mint green colour scheme – are the perfect backdrop for any event worthy of being hosted at this London institution.

Look One.

Red Dress Vintage from eBay
Shoes Christian Louboutin
Coat Amanda Wakeley (sample)

Look Two.

Dress Razan Alazzouni
Shoes Manolo Blahnik
Necklace Vintage
Flowers by Wild at Heart

Huge Thanks to The Leading Hotels of the World for arranging this amazing experience.

Smoke


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Billowing whispers. Each cloud moving through space with its own intention. Only flickers of Isolda Pop punctuate the storm.

For a more than a year I’ve been thinking about video. Some of my favourite visuals and stills come from videos. It’s such a beautiful medium when it’s used well, it can be so evocative and transportive. Chanel, Chloe and Dior use it to create magical moments, that are aspirational, modern day mini fairytales. Although I could never hope to create the magic Baz Luhrmann or Tim Walker are hired for, I aim to make some little moving moments, that like my stills, I hope you will find intriguing and original. Without huge production budgets I think narrative videos can be difficult to pull off. I hope these little flickers avoid this. I have chosen to stick with pure visuals, which are the bedrock of this site. In this way, I hope video will grow on the site in an authentic way that is unique to me and this platform. I spent a lot of time thinking about how video should look on the site. I have never liked the disjointed vimeo-youtube look of embedded videos. So after much thought and research, design meetings and many hours work by my amazing developer DJ, video now sits effortlessly within the style of my content.

Isolda were kind (or brave) enough to let me try with them first. We have been working together since the beginning of both our careers and I hope we will for many more years. I think, as time passes by (the site just past its 5 year blogiversary) how special the people who supported me and believed in me from the beginning are. Isolda and I took a chance, a leap of faith on each other. I’m so glad we did, and I’m so delighted that they are the first showcase of video on this site. It feels right.

I have been saving images of smoke editorials for years, always waiting for the perfect project to use the idea on. Finally this project happened and I knew this was it. It was so much harder than I could ever of imagined but with the patience and effort of Kit and Vicki, we got there in the end.

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