Lookbook: Faded Forests

We’ve been working on something for a while now, and today we are so excited to be able to show you. Probably over a year ago, Hollie had the idea to shoot a lookbook for Ainslie Wood Co. After a lot of work, and a truly amazing amount of help, it’s ready.

We hope you enjoy the first official Ainslie Wood Co. Lookbook: Faded Forests.

We named it Faded Forests after one of Emily Dickenson’s letters, but more so, because have you seen those pictures? If they are not the embodiment of faded forests, I don’t know what is.

I mentioned we had a lot of help, and when I say a lot, I mean WOW I CAN’T BELIEVE WE HAVE SUCH NICE FRIENDS. There are a lot of people to thank, so let me get through this.

First and foremost, we probably wouldn’t have undertook such a project if we didn’t know an amazingly talented photographer who was gracious enough to volunteer his services. Jesse Senko took all the photographs, provided most of the art direction, and turned a pretty simple photo shoot idea into something magnificent. Most of these shots were taken in total darkness, or at the very least, in absence of any real sunlight or flash. Do you know what kind of skills you need to have to pull that off? Serious skillz.

While we’re on the subject of Jesse, there are a lot more Senkos to thank. All the photos were taken up on his family farm, and his entire family was warm and gracious as a group of nine mostly-strangers took over their home with clothing racks, makeup applications and hair teasing. Jesse’s wife Melanie even cooked us an amazing meal and had snacks on hand all day. All of the Senkos are lovely, lovely people. Thanks guys.

We also lucked out by knowing a couple of uber-babes who modeled for us. Do you know how many beautiful and gorgeous friends we have? A lot. The modeling was done by Heather (co-owner of The Brain), Jessy, and Fehn. Hollie and I spent a good portion of the shoot going “Oh my god I can’t believe how pretty you are!” These girls were all serious troopers, putting up with something like a 10 hour shoot, and wearing skimpy dresses (or fringe bikinis) while standing in a freezing cold windy field. In some of the shots that we didn’t use, you can see gigantic goosebumps on their skin. Troopers I tell you, super babe troopers.

That’s not all though, not even close. When our hair and makeup assistant cancelled on us THE NIGHT BEFORE the shoot, we were in a complete panic. Hollie was going to try to learn to apply makeup via the internet that night, until some people stepped in and saved our asses. Hollie’s sister in law Allison Cillis did all the makeup, and it was just what we were hoping for. She did an amazing job. After some panicked twitter posts looking for someone who could do hair, the power of the Internet saved us and sent us Lee-Anne Wilson. Lee-Anne was nice enough to entertain a 10pm call from me asking if she could work with us on a shoot the following day, and then she delivered. Hollie and I had always imagined wind-swept, wavy, hippy chick hair, and that is exactly what we got.

Seriously, the entire shoot day was great. It was cold, raining, cloudy and took a million times longer than any of us thought, but it was so fun. The team of people that worked on this project made something that could be long and unpleasant into a fantastic experience. Even though we were working, it felt like we spent the better part of our evening just hanging out in a cabin in the woods, drinking some gin. If all photo shoots are like that, count me in.

We would also be crazy not to thank our amazingly talented friends Hubert Marczuk from MethodGroup for the amazing job he did with the lookbook website, and Mike Jerome, Designer to the Stars, for putting up with all our design requests as usual. They both put up with a flurry of emails from Hollie and I that almost always start with “that looks great, but can you do this…”
and were really both the sweetest. We had never met Hubert before this project, but I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other. He’s great. MethodGroup is great, and as an added bonus, he designed the site so that the pictures are always to scale. Try dragging and changing the size of your browser frame… it’s pretty neat.

Ok, I think I have everyone covered. Do I? Oh god I hope I didn’t miss anyone. Thank you to all our amazing friends who helped us. Thank you for reading this far. Thank you for looking at our lookbook.

Thank you thank you thank you.

Check out the full lookbook here.