About a week ago, I got an email from my friend Amma telling me about a new book she’d just heard about. London Tattoos, was being put together by photographer Alex Macnaughton with the aim to photograph and document the stories of a diverse collection of tattooed people in London. I figured I had nothing to loose and so quickly filled in the application form. “I’m not the most tattooed girl out there,” I thought, “but it’s always worth giving these things a go.”
To my surprise I got a phone call from Alex just a few days later, last Thursday, asking if I was free to come to the studio to be photographed on Saturday! There’s nothing like short notice but I did happen to be free so I said I’d be there to get my ‘pose on’. Alex told me that his aim was to photograph tattooed people all frrom different walks of life, and so if I wanted to bring props or clothing to represent my personality and what I do for a living that would be great. Eek! I had 3 days to find an outfit that was both wedding-related but Rock n Roll, and awesome enough to be in an actual real life book!
So I turned to Twitter and asked my followers if anyone had a non-weddingy wedding dress I could borrow and low and behold Clare of The Wedding Club in Birmingham messaged me saying she’d send me a selection of dresses to choose from. How lucky am I!?
On Saturday morning (literally 10 minutes before I had to leave – good old Royal Mail!) a box of 7 beautiful dresses arrived at my door step. They were a mix of vintage and modern and there was even a beautiful Temperley number in there for me to choose from. In the end, I selected this beautiful vintage gown – a stunning green, tulle number and I wore it with my Butler & Wilson crystal skull tiara (and yes, I’m pretty sure they did all think I was a little bonkers.)
I also brought along a multi-coloured dress from Therapy that I’ve had for years and a couple of my favourite pairs of Vivienne Westwood/Melissa shoes to represent my usual style of dress (no jeans and a tee-shirt for me!)
I arrived at the studio in plenty of time and had my hair and make up done. Being shot in a studio is a completely different vibe to being on location. It felt really chilled and jokey and less stressful in many ways. It was such a fun few hours, the whole team made me feel really welcome. I was even allowed to hang out afterwards and perv on watch a whole bunch of sexy tattooed men get photographed. Oh its a hard life!
Alex is still on the look out for tattooed beauties to be photographed for the project. If you are interested in applying, go check out the website and fill in the simple form. The book will be available in all good bookshops in September. I can’t wait to see the final thing!
