Scenes from a Look Book Shoot

Gryphon doesn't have a big marketing budget (really, it's pretty non-existent) — we don't do a runway show, we don't have a fashion week presentation and we don't work with a PR agency. We do, however, shoot look books each season to have a representation for our buyers and press of how we envision the collection. It's really our only form of branding and we have a lovely team of amazing talent that works with us each season. We'll be shipping Fall 2011 (yes, already!) to stores in July and (hopefully) posting our Fall 2011 look book pictures to the website soon. In the meantime, here's a few behind the scenes pictures from the Fall shoot.

The night before the shoot, testing paint colors for our backdrop

Finished backdrop - Svieta on set

Svieta being prepped by April Greaves and Susan Joy

Laurence and April

We took a brief break to take a group portrait. From left: Kevin Sturman, Tom Dunn, Stephanie Tran, Aimee Cho, Laurence, Stephanie Feller, Elif Ucan, Frank Park, April Greaves, Susan Joy.

We always have friends and family and children and animals dropping by during the weekend of the shoot - it helps us all take ourselves a little less seriously and adds a festive, reunion-like feel to the weekend. Below are some images of our small, smaller and tiny special visitors:

Eloise - our budding animal rights activist, much more interested in cat videos on youtube than in the models on set

August, eyeing Boo and Billy off screen. He was alternately fascinated and terrified of the dogs

Our tiniest visitor of the weekend - Oliver Sturman!

Family Portrait! Boo and Billy with Tim and Tom

Almost done with the shoot - me celebrating and Susan getting me ready for my close-up

Trial and Error

When we're prepping for our look book shoots, the lovely and talented Susan Joy usually puts together looks and we talk them over and see what's working (and not) and what areas we might need to fill in and what types of accessories we want to pull for the shoot. It's easiest to tell whether something's working by seeing it on the body. That's not always possible due to budget and/or schedule. In those cases, we might make outfits and lay them out on the floor (which is something my friend Meredith and I used to do when she edited Vogue Index and I worked for her - yes, seeing clothes on the floor makes me nostalgic for Vogue).

Successful Fall 2010 look book prep on the floor:

Sometimes, we're lucky enough to have a professional model come and do a fitting (which really is the best way to figure out if proportions are working), like the super cool Linda Beecroft, who makes everything look chic and relaxed.

Successful Fall 2011 look book prep on Linda:

And once in a blue moon, if we're struggling with a look that's really not coming together and the floor's not cutting it, I might try a few things on. Those are usually desperate times and somehow, my trying it on doesn't result in a magic fix.

UNSUCCESSFUL Spring 2010 looks: