Thoughts upon having my photograph taken

People are coming to my mother’s house later on today to shoot me. No, I am not the subject of a mafia hit. They are taking my portrait to accompany a magazine feature I am writing.

As you may know from reading LLG, I have been on a sabbatical from magazine editing for just over a year now, so I’ve got out of the habit of being in front of a camera. Not that I enjoyed it in the first place.

It’s just that in New York, if your job title has the words ‘executive’ and ‘fashion’ and ‘editor’ in it, you only have to stick your head into a glossy party or launch and they start shoving you in front of the cameras. Magazine editors in Manhattan have a way higher profile than they do in London. Poisoned chalice, if you ask me.

The only plus point is that, having seen multiple hideous pose & grin photographs of me, I now know my best camera angles. (Left side profile only, sideways glance, body twist if you’re asking.) My London friends think it’s hilarious (the British do not care about such things as a rule) that I now automatically adopt said angle when a camera is in range. Net result: I look like a complete poseur in pictures taken over here when everyone else looks lovely & normal



Guess which person is confusing her godson’s christening photographer with a fashion party snapper?

Anyway back to today. Although I kind of have my head around being in front of street snappers & party photographers, sitting for a proper portrait is not something I have to do that often.

I spent four or so years producing fashion and photographic shoots all round the world. Then I became a stylist, and a magazine editor. So the idea of being on a shoot and not either producing or styling it is most odd. Although I am rather luxuriating in the knowledge that my only responsibility is to get dressed in the morning.

Except. The editor said, ‘No black please, it’s coming out in the spring.’

Ha.

This is my rail:



I do wear colour sometimes, I promise: in the summer I am a veritable rainbow. But this is England in January. It requires black & shades of mud. All my rainbow clothes are in Manhattan. At this rate I’ll be wearing something of my mother’s with a bulldog clip round the back.

Good thing I unearthed my prop kit at the back of a cupboard the other day.