Behind a great summer catalogue shoot is a hardworking team of photographers, models, stylists, masterjis, helpers and a sundry mix of bystanders and of course family. And a whole bunch of relationships, built over time, that enabled all this hard work to come together at the right moment.
So first things first. The shoot came together as a result of a chat between our model Susha and I, back in February of 2019. Yes, that’s how long this shoot has taken to come together. And that’s what small businesses are all about, aren’t they? Relationships built over time. Susha was my customer at the By Hand from the Heart exhibition in Chennai in February 2019. She browsed through our collection, we bonded over our love for classic handloom silhouettes and she ended up buying our Boxy Top in kora cotton. We kept in touch since then, following each other on social media and Susha has featured the top in many of her shoots since then. She loved the quality and texture of the kora fabric, and it was a great wardrobe separate to pair with other wardrobe pieces.
We were lucky to find our talented photographer Gowrishanker, through Susha. Gowri has worked with her on a few informal shoots, that also featured Ela pieces and we loved his style.
So sometime late last year as I was mulling over investing in our first brand shoot, I got in touch with Susha and discussed the idea. Gowri came into the picture too. We decided to shoot in Palakkad, given that we are based here and wanted to use some of the local backdrops in our shoot. Once we finalised the dates, it was a race to get our samples ready, the venue okayed and to procure the best camera equipment for the shoot. And it all came together. Our workshops worked over time to get the samples ready across two cities- Jaipur and Palakkad. We did a whole bunch of zoom and audio calls with Susha and Gowri to decide the look, and styling. We sent across samples to Susha and did fit checks to see if the garment construction worked for Susha’s silhouette. A lot of calls were exchanged between us, Gowri and the camera equipment company to source a specific softbox that Gowri was keen on, with all the challenges possible between a Malayalam speaking team and a Tamil speaking company:)
Finally, Gowri and Susha traveled to Palakkad in mid February, and we managed to get through the exhausting two days through gruelling heat (if you have ever visited Palakkad, then you know what we mean) The clothes and the model looked beautiful and we couldnt be happier with the results. But as you might have deduced if you have read thus far, it truly takes a village to get a shoot of this nature accomplished and we are grateful to each and every soul that has helped us in this regard.
A big thank you to our photographer Gowrishankar and model Susha for working so hard over the two days of our shoot; my manager Nisha for racing through production timelines and making sure everything was ready in time (despite a whole number of challenges!), our workshop partners -Ratan ji and his team in Jaipur and Roshni and her team in Palakkad who helped us get the shoot samples ready in time, Sapna and Harshit from Joshua India without whom our blockprinting would not be complete and would never be this beautiful:) and finally Mr Prasad, the CEO at Tripenta Hotel, Malampuzha and his wonderfully helpful team for letting us use their beautiful lawns for our shoot. And to my ever patient family for helping us with the small and the big stuff always.
We hope you love our pictures, we certainly do