‘Summer of Angels’ – Spell Holiday 14/15.
Photographer Ali Mitton @alimitton
Muse Ashley Smith @ Society Management
H&M Ashlee Rose
Styling Spell Pennefather + Chloe Chippendale
Vintage borrowed from our girl Sarah Humphrey’s private collection
Assistant Chance Welton
Film ~ B-Roll Cameron Salvatore | Edit Johnny Abegg | Music MT Warning
Thanks to Dara Siegel from I Heart Reps for your help producing this shoot & to Huggy for cruising the chopper like a boss.
We have an old and slightly tattered piece of paper taped to our wall, on it is scrawled our model ‘wish list’ – muses we’re dying to work with. Ash Smith has been on it ever since we saw her in Russh in 2010. So there we were, in the sweltering heat of the Californian desert, watching our muse Ashley Smith fly on down the highway on the back of a vintage Harley Chopper. Eyes stinging in the heat and dust. Pinching ourselves. Loving every moment.
There’s this incongruous quality we’re always searching for in our shoots, a subtle balance of FOXY vs LOVELY. And Ash Smith nails this every time. She’s kind of rough and ready and foxy as hell – but she’s cute and fun and lovely too. Add dirty cowgirl boots and some lovely white broderie anglaise cotton and that incongruity that we love just builds.
With a dream team by our side (including OZ photographer Ali Mitton and stylist Chloe Chippendale) and a 70s Motel as our playground, the shoot felt like an extension of our dreams.
We hope you love this collection, it’s so damn fun. Perfect for holiday, full of colour, bold florals and bright prints, paired back with some lovely broderie anglaise in whites, blacks and dusty blues.
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A little side note: People often ask us, “Why all the USA imagery??” And for good reason. It’s weird, I know. We live in Australia and have lived here all our lives. We adore (beyond words!) our home town of Byron Bay, and (although we don’t surf) we really are quite the pair of proud Aussies. So, in answer to this oft asked question – the following is the only explanation I can give you.
When our Latvian grandparents fled the 2nd World War, they walked through a war-torn German harbour heading toward a refugee boat fleeing to the USA. At the last minute it was decided there wasn’t room for them on that boat and they were ushered onto a boat heading for Australia. For some reason they always felt that that they should have been on that boat, and a life-long intrigue for that far off land, the USA, was born. This intrigue was passed on down to my father and then eventually to us. Ironically, now that I think about it, Spelly and I named our first sons Texas and Indiana – and (though Indiana was actually named after Indiana Jones) it would seem that the intrigue may be passed to another generation.