A photoshoot, an art gallery, a dream come true!

Once upon a February, I got a message on Instagram. A local art gallery wanted to house my clothes. How exciting! How do I know someone my age who owns an art gallery? A random friend from high school just happens to own her very own art gallery now! Monica dated my one friends back in the day and by the magic of small town connections, I'm in! She's an amazing painter, has a husband and a baby girl whose hair is always in palm tree formation.
View her art here.

MonicaDuongArt.com

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What will become of my clothes? They will be hosted for a month and sell to the public. The first time this has ever happened! In Casually Uncommon history! I've vended at Oakland's First Friday and of course, Vallejo's Second Friday, And at friend's houses etc, but this was a true Brick and Mortar, and the Gallery, Mama de Luna (mama(Monique) of luna(her daughter's middle name), is in the adorable Crockett. On a street of bars, antique shops and art galleries. It overlooks the Carquinez straight, and is right across the bridge from Vallejo. At the opening 2 Saturdays back, we kicked it there, ate the scrumptious food, networked with artists. I had been starting a new line of products when Monica reached out to me. I stopped everything and began preparing for this opening. My garments had never been inventoried, all needed to be de-wrinkled, they had all been either worn by me or folded up in storage for a while. After a week and a half of touching up and organizing these garments, I had 2 weeks to plan a shoot.
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I had a San Jose shoot fall through, mostly because all possible models where out of town for presidents day weekend. So I planned my shoot around my one friend who's super eager to model. She was called into work so I had to get 2 models in 4 days. My friends Jenny and Korvel were not only modelesque, they were available under insanely short notice. My friend, Abe, who I met at Burning Man, and lives in the city now (Photographer of my Mammoth Suit line), was itching to get back into photography. He had creative differences with the boss from his last photo job and had to get out. He now works for Uber. We shot 17 garments in an hour and a half. We were so lucky, because the weather was phenomenal. We were like a finely tuned machine.

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​I would keep track of the order of outfits, Jenny would get dressed and shoot, Korvel would shoot whiles she's dressing. Abe made coffee for all of us and we moved in perfect formation motivated by excitement and our time constraint (I had to work later that day). The end result was incredible. The style is almost reminiscent of an American Apparel Ad, in a good way. Abe transformed my apparel through the models and the emotion, juxtaposition and balance between the back and foreground. Jenny had modeled for my Alien Angelica underwater video shoot, but has yet to show of her editorial finesse. She nailed it for this balcony shoot. Korvel is a stylish man, and seems shy and calm in person, but when that camera aimed at him, his inner fire burned the house down! It's important to find models who can move very slightly, and meticulously changing mostly their facial features without needed to be directed. For Korvel, his power is in his fearsome stare. Just beautiful. These two made modeling look effortless, Abe was amazing as always and I'm pleased this shoot came together in the way that it did. Four days notice, and all.
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