Vintage Makeup shoot with DD Nickel

Several weeks back DD Nickel and I were here working on a shoot when she presented an interesting idea to me. She had been wanting do to a series of ‘Vintage Makeup’ makeovers mimicking some celebrities from the past. Since i’m all about everything vintage, I thought it was a perfect fit for me. We broke the shoot into 2 days, and D.D. brought along a bunch of her friends who she was luckily enough to get to volunteer, who looked like the stars of yesteryear we were reproducing looks for. I want to thank not only D.D., but all the gals who made this possible– there was a lot of patience, mimosas and quiche involved to get us through each day!

 

 

 

First Up (and personally my favorite only because i love old, silly sci-fi stuff) Is our combo or Barbarella and Raquel Welch in “One Million Years BC” TELL me you wouldn’t go see this movie?!

 

…here we have TWIGGY – and I have to admit the ‘color bars’ are a knock off of a shoot i found of hers online! Know what’s weird?… when I was about 5 and at Disneyland there was this huge crowd gathering around someone, and we walked over and it turned out to be Twiggy! At 5 I wasn’t even sure what that meant, but knew it was SOMETHING due to the crowd.

 

 

Next up Liz Taylor – who had died recently right before we did this. So we felt a little guilty, well, not really all that much..

 

honestly, who DOESN’T stand around in a mink with a martini?  Stop by here nearly any afternoon, and that’s now you’ll find me.

 

 

so D.D. also had an idea to do vintage cosmetic ads for herself, and my pink and black bathroom worked as a wonderful set! The blouse she’s wearing was actually her grandmothers!

 

–so this is a bit Doris Day with a touch of Dinah Shore. I had JUST had this new aqua colored sofa delivered and the timing could not have been more perfect. As a friend commented –“now that sofa is a tax write-off!” She TOTALLY nailed that fresh, kinda over-the-top 50’s smily thing!

 

 

ok so how damn cool is this???!!–here we are trying to capture the essence of Lena Horne. And as you’ll see at the bottom of this post, I also replicated 2 fake album covers for fun too–

 

Ooooo baby – it’s Veronica Lake! I don’t even know what to say other than she was perfect for this, and I even surprised myself with how cool the lighting came out. Luckily our model was not suffering mental illness or dead of hepatitis…

 

one more ‘glamour’ pose for Barbarella–not really copying any particular shot, but just so cool with the sueded getup and furs! ( a little behind the scenes buzz-kill–there are 2 people holding up the furs behind her – and that small grey ‘patch’ to the right behind Sonia’s head are one of their pant legs—ahhhh, photography is so magical )

 

 

Our last look of the shoot was Clara Bow–which was interesting for me photographically since so many of the images I found had extreme shallow focus, due to the cameras and film speed used at that time. I hauled out the tilt-shift lens and added a fair amount of texture, as I wanted these to feel like they were discovered in an old box of prints somewhere-

 

 

I wanted to include this image because there is something so incredible to me about the gracefulness of this pose that she achieved or this shot. It kinda made it a dream come true image for me, as getting that softness while being aware of the light and your expression  is NOT an easy thing to do! ( another photo behind the scenes spoiler: each of these images EASILY took several hundred shots to get the final, exact pose and facial expressions, as well as a fair amount of Photoshopping. So when people say “I don’t photograph well”–remember that a single image from a point-and-shoot with a nasty-ass direct flash, or standing in the blinding sun with hideous shadows does NOT constitute ‘photography’!!  Thank you- i’ll get off my soap box now…)

 

 

and here are the 2 faked albums I mentioned earlier for fun—