Stitches and Stubble

Here's the round-up and the wind-down for our shoot from Major Friday last week. But where better to start...than where i started? How Drole.
Iceland this summer brought forth many amazing experiences to my head. Some, including my lovely colour prints and perhaps some of the traditional cuisine, i'm still digesting. New experiences, however small have a tendency to precipitate a changing of tastes. And no where have my tastes changed more in the last year than on the subject...  of menswear.
How convenient eoin. Anyway, during our meanderings around a balmy Reykjavik, Sola brought me into a grey basement of some old mall. "...maybe this place has a toilet" I was thinking out loud, when she led me by the hand into one of the greatest treasures and possibly the last bastions of gentlemen's fashions anywhere along the Mid Atlantic Ridge. This is of course the noble Herrafataverslun Kormáks og Skjaldar emporium. (Go on, say it.) Here they all were, the man's best friends. Cuff-links and canes, top hats and tailoring, modern cardigans and creaking old tailcoats. Wonderful stuff, crammed full of old typewriters and mannequins,  any kind of vintage prop you care to name. Brilliant colours aglow all the way down to their range of socks. And if the décor wasn't enough, some eyewatering intricacies will bowl you out of those old jeans and right into some tweed. There is a resident barber complete with candy-striped gilding and a chair of red leather so barberish - your hair would shape itself just sitting in it. On top of this, if ever you were to treat you and your generations to come to a fine new suit, your purchase will be announced to a glass of whiskey. And this is only because recent legislation forbids them offering you a cigar!


Out in front of the shop I encountered some mystifying photography. The man responsible is Baldur Kristjáns. A renowned and ingenious Icelandic photographer whose calender with the shop sparked off all manner of experiences and taste-changes in my head to say the least. And they have happily lay dormant until our first studio session last friday. IT did get me thinking about photography and passion. When there is so much fashion around, and so little menswear by comparison. And even less again are they wearing any shirts, and smaller still are the few wearing full breasted finery, and then only the microscopic few represent the gentleman of old. Eccentric but elegant; poised, purposeful and madly pedantic. Not a ripped bulk of bagels and buns with an aircraft-carrier chin, any guy, with morals and a moustache. BRILLIANT.
To my help came Edinburgh's answer to gentlemanly retail - Walker Slater Victoria Street. They took the time to show us around, find our right style and fit us up with some handsome stitches and some razor brogues. For the ideas... well i wish i could be more helpful. I know if i was transported back to the studio with the same materials, everything would be completely different. Which is refreshing actually, because that is exactly where i would like to go.


But not before:

And all that is left is to go step by step through my lighting diagrams and equipment...Only joking, its nearly 2 in the morning. 


But i wont hesitate to expose those behind the seeeenz

Special thanks to Haig and Andy for their efforts and a huge thanks to Hank and Burden for forcing me to stay put and let them do all the running around. Saviours! What a team effort

e