Model - Muse - Best friend
Tomorrow my bestie and muse, Bee, is getting married! I’m so excited for her and wanted to take a min to honour her as a human and for her role in this brand and my life. A while ago, I wrote a blog telling you a bit about Bee and since then her role in the brand has evolved as our friendship has deepened so I thought I’d tell you a bit more about the beauty who fills my squares.
She is without a doubt one of my favourite people in the world. So thoughtful and considerate and super shy if you don’t know her. She has zero arrogance or Diva-ness in her. She spends most days working with her mother and their 21 ponies on their 100 -acre farm when she’s not modeling.
Although I’ve always loved her and used her as the face of the brand since day one, her role deepened about a year ago. Shooting takes a tremendous amount of energy and even though it’s definitely one of my favourite parts of the job, it’s also the most stressful and exhausting. Especially with this brand. On average, I’m only making 20 pieces per style which means most styles sell out using images from just one shoot, meaning I have to shoot incessantly. We do one, 2ish hour shoot every week. This seems like it wouldn't be a lot but when you’re shooting about 20 looks at lightning speed and trying to keep it fresh, fun and different it’s exhausting and hard.
About a year ago, Bee and I hit a slump and felt as if we were just doing boring product shoots with no vibe or energy. We both weren’t enjoying it as much as we wanted to, so together we decided to work on lifting it up a notch. This is a big thing for me that Bee was willing to carry some of the weight of the creativity on her shoulders. There are not many models who would invest this energy into a brand that wasn’t theirs. I’m so lucky to have this queen!
I literally have no extra time between my 4 kids and my CU roles (I do all the designing, production, creative direction and act as marketing director- in other brands, these would be the roles filled by a team of people), so Bee took on the role of Pinterest scrolling and shoot inspiration gathering. She would make boards for all these different concepts and come up with new shoot concepts all the time. This takes a huge load off me and helped us to bring you way cooler imagery, with more of a story and that’s much more fun for you to follow.
This last year, we really feel like we’ve raised our shoots up a notch and have had so much fun in doing so. We’ve let both my and Bee’s personality come out in the concepts and styling and we hope you’ve enjoyed the ride as much as we have!
Basically, by this ramble, I’m trying to share that this goddess is not just a pretty face (that I’m creepy obsessed with), she is literally the definition of a muse, the inspiring queen to this story.
I can’t wait to watch this goddess get married tomorrow and share all the pics with you. There will be a lot of horses and CU in this wedding! I also can’t wait to see how her role in CU further evolves as she enters this next stage in her life. She keeps telling me she doesn’t want to model forever but I’m dead set on making her grow old with us! We shall see.....
Xxxxx
