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Earlier this month I produced a lookbook with vintage lingerie curator Sani, of Shop Coco Bunny. It was my second time working with her collection, and when we did selections for this shoot I immediately fell in love with a pair of tiny silky lacey nude bloomers.
Because my models don’t try the clothing until the day of the shoot, it’s a gamble whether I’ll actually get to style a specific garment. I had high hopes that the bloomers would fit, and when the model came into the room wearing them it was as though they were tailored to her frame. These bloomers were the last collection piece that we shot, and by that point the energy in the room had gone from scattered productivity to inspired creativity — like any other flow state in life, it feels so good when you reach this point. It’s when the best work is created.
So maybe it was the bloomers, maybe it was the energy, but whatever it was, it resulted in my favorite ensemble of the day.
We shot the entire collection at Blind Tiger Portland, in a tiny square shaped room known as The Puzzle Room. It’s what, in the real estate world, might be called “cozy” — as in, tiny, with a short ceiling, slanting floors, a secret door way, and deep grey walls — the south and west of which are completely covered in windows. I discovered this room during our first shoot in February. The available light was good so we posed a few photos, and ended up capturing one of the best compositions of the day.
So for the spring shoot, I knew I wanted to be back in the Puzzle Room.
With 3 of us in the tiny space, every move was a calculated do-si-do. But despite the physical limitations, the images came out with such a tenderness of lighting that there’s no perception of the enclosing elements just outside each frame.
And maybe more than anything else, what brought me back to this room was the painted credenza which was home to — you guessed it — stacks (and stacks) of puzzles.
Right before this shoot I’d gotten completely swept up by a New Yorker Portfolio piece about the living rooms of NYC elites; I was obsessed with how much of a life could be captured in that one interior, intimate space.
Power Houses: Inside the living rooms of notable New Yorkers.
It was with inspiration still ringing from these portraits that I decided to leave puzzle stacks in some of the shots, and even invited a leggy rubber fig into the final images of the day.
The encore shots were unplanned — Concetta is wearing a Coco Bunny camisole that she owns. Her hair was just out of a top knot, and it’s partially covered by a bolo tie, haphazardly slid on before making our way downstairs for a few just-for-fun photos in the hotel’s mirror wall.
She was genuinely admiring the chandelier when I snapped this. And while I mentioned earlier that the bloomers made up my favorite ensemble of the day, the unposed, contemplative expression in this shot is by far my favorite mood.
To end, I’ll say this. Lingerie can be a quiet claim of femininity; in the way silk moves along your skin, the way light reflects off covered bone, in the familiar shapes formed under veiled lace — and as disarming as it can be electrifying, it’s proof in the magic of a garment to transform the ways we feel in our body. At the heart of Sani’s collection is unfettered encouragement to keep making that claim. xo
You can shop vintage lingerie online, or at various in-person vintage markets listed on the Shop Coco Bunny IG.