This was a really fun campaign to shoot. Indian Couture designer Gaurav Gupta does very architectural dresses. There is so much construction that some of the dresses give you the impression they can stand on their own. They are very strong and very bold, much like the women and the Bollywood crowd that likes to wear them.
Gaurav Gupta’s universe is very moody and quite dark at times, like a “Brothers-Grimm” fairytale. I wanted to take this “construction” and “darkness” but keep the fairytale feeling. At the same time, I wanted to “erase” the visual vocabulary and start fresh.
First of all, we constructed this big, heavy, plexiglass platform with lights underneath and had the models laying down. Since the lights we used were LED and kino-flo lights, in order to achieve to achieve enough luminance we had to place quite a few lights underneath the platform. Technical lesson learned: you can never have too much light! Finally, we used a crane with a seat on the edge and I was placed right above them. Check out the video to catch a glimpse!
The result is so light and so dreamy. The models look like they are floating on air just waking up from a slumber ready to go to the ball. Starring models were Diva Dhawan, Irene Augustin, Arya Bhatt, Jason Shah and Guri Sekhon. The stylist was Gautam Kalra and hair and makeup was done by Marianna Mukuchyan.
