September 30 2017

Behind the Scenes of the Skylar Yoo Photo Shoot

This past Monday, we shot professional photos for the shirts we’ll be selling at Skylar Yoo. We’re about a month out till launch, people! Isn’t that crazy?

Instead of worrying about morning traffic to LA, Sam, my friend and manager of Skylar Yoo, Kat, and I stayed at the Ace Hotel in downtown. That hotel is extra special to me because it’s where the thought of having an actual clothing line seemed like a possibility. The excitement of the day caused me to wake up at a frickin’ crazy hour, 5am. (Call time was 8am.) I just didn’t know what to expect for my first photo shoot. Did the photographer understand my vision? Would the outfits work? What if the model didn’t show?

I found my photographer, Karen Chen, while browsing through Instagram. I went to her website, dug around and found out that she had worked three years as photographer for one of the top fashion bloggers today, Chriselle Lim. I was sold. (If you’re out there reading this Chriselle, I love ya, girl. Same to you, Aimee Song. Go Korean girls!)

Included in Karen’s fee was her photography assistant and a MUA (make-up artist, don’t worry I had to Google it, too). I found out at the shoot that the make-up artist was Andrew Velazquez who is currently on a Lifetime show called American Beauty Star. Read about it, here, or you can watch snippets of it on Andrew’s Instagram.

Now, I needed a stylist and a model. Karen recommended Michelle Chan as well as Ford model Victoria Peyser. For a model, I was looking for someone with a mixed heritage. Victoria immediately caught my eye. The 19-year-old is a beautiful mix of German, Irish, Korean and Japanese.

I’d love to give you all the details about the shoot but you would probably be overwhelmed. All I have to say is that it was an A-MAZING day. Like one of those days that you’ll remember for the rest of your life. Everything just came together perfectly. No drama, no chaos, every single person in the team brought their A game. We spent four long hours in the studio getting all the product shots done and then jumped around three different spots in downtown LA to get the editorial ones. My favorite part was working with Michelle in styling the outfits. It was so much fun pairing the shirts with jackets, jewelry and shoes. I know it’s such a girly thing but it felt like a cool, creative part of the project. Victoria made the clothes come alive!

Karen is a super talented, super hard working photographer. The girl had a contact sheet with all the photos sent to me that same night (it was right around 11:30pm). Talk about fast turnaround time. I would work with her again in a heartbeat.

Sam and I catch ourselves reminiscing about the day. How the weather was perfect, how hard everyone worked, how stunning Victoria looked in the shirts. I can’t wait to show you the final, edited shots.

At the end of the shoot, Sam, Kat and I went to this really cool vegan restaurant in the Arts District called Cafe Gratitude. We sat around reflecting on the day. All those long hours, working with the designers on the shirts, figuring out our brand and our message culminated in that moment. Though we haven’t launched yet it felt like we had reached a major milestone.

Thank you to everyone for helping us get this far. Skylar Yoo will be making her debut soon!

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