The Hunger Days

One day in Berlin after hiking up and down various mountains in the Alsace region and I was off to London to style a shoot for Rankin’s, (yes freaking Rankin!) Hunger TV Young Blood Series. I touched down in London after an almost two hour long flight delay and was immediately greeted by London’s amazing hospitality.

Running down the stairs in panic with my little suitcase in order to catch the last underground to Islington where I was staying I was faced with a long queue of hopeless tourists trying to buy a ticket. With only a few minutes left I seriously thought I was going to be left having to figure out London’s bus maze but instead the underground staff let everyone on for free! With google maps and the compass function I finally reached the flat at one in the morning and happily fell onto one of the three furniture pieces in the flat: a pull-out couch I was going to share with my friend Shawnna Downing who was also the makeup artist for our Hunger shoot. Lina Zangers who was the photographer was also already there and greeted me with a hot cup of tea.

The next few days we got up very early and began our seven hour long camping sessions in various cafés that offered free wi-fi, where I called one agency and brand after another to organise pieces from the likes of Rag & Bone, Sandro, Burberry, Bimba y Lola and countless other designers I had the wonderful opportunity of working with.

London works so differently from Berlin and organization was a thousand times more stressful as agencies are surprisingly far less organized but just as lovely. There is a lot of running after, incessant phoning and kind hassling involved, which for someone who is used to efficiency was seriously exasperating.

Confirmations had to be followed up on at least five times and you can forget writing emails as no one seems to read them properly. “Are you still shooting in Berlin?” or sending packages to the wrong address became something of a norm. I was pretty much just starting to pull out my hair in disbelief that Burberry was constantly confusing everything. We were also all crossing our fingers in dire hope of the unpredictable weather holding up and it did!

We basically besieged the Yumchaa café in Soho where the model changed outfits in the bathroom and we drank and ate ourselves through the at least twenty different varieties of tea and banana breads. Soho was our main shooting area and in between taxi honks, rush hour and numerous pedestrians wanting to pose with the model, I can honestly say it was a truly great but tiring shoot.

The long days of preparation were starting to gnaw at my bones towards the evening and we had already planned a very spontaneous second flash shoot with a different model back in Islington at 10 pm. A photographer friend of mine, Kim Lang, that was suddenly standing behind us in Soho while shooting the last outfit decided to come along and help us with our very impromptu shoot and suddenly we were running about roundabouts, lying on top of an old Minni and even ended up shooting inside an unoccupied flat that we came across at one in the morning. Four hours and seven outfits later we were finally finished at 2 am and oh my God were we through! Next day at 8 am I was already racing to return everything and catch my flight back to Berlin.

London was a serious eye-opener. It feels like there’s no limit to what you can do. Top models, top designers and creatives who really know what they are doing and understand that people need to be paid. Here the fashion industry isn’t just a hobby but it’s a business. This mentality seriously needs to take a firm foothold in Berlin where you’re still left feeling guilty when asking if you could please be paid for the work you are doing. I learned so much and am taking a very low bow to a city that is tough but has a more respectful and global view on editorial and styling work. I am most definitely going to back to do more more work there.

My wonderful friend Rike and assistant for the shoots took some amazing behind the scenes photos of this insane and surreal day that was filled with so many moments that felt like they were taken directly out of a movie. My love and thanks goes out to everyone I spent this intense but inspirational week with and those that lent us so much support. I’ll be sharing the final results very soon!

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