Ottomania 2008. One of our clients, Jim Thompson, asked British textile designer
Richard Smith to design a line of fabrics for sophisticated, hip and creative
women who are established professionals with families. Richard put together a
really cool collection inspired by Ottoman Empire fabrics, The collection has a
very eclectic, vintage/retro look with clashing textures and patterns reminiscent
of a Cairo clothing shop (see some of the fabric swatches above).

When I first started thinking about where to go with the advertising and brand
direction, I remembered seeing an early 50's photo by Irving Penn of a woman
in a Moroccan Palace. So my first thought was do a sort of homage to this picture
or possibly to one Lewis Carroll's 1850 photos of little girls in Asian outfits.

I had seen some of Barcelona photographer Mireia Castane fashion editorial
work and loved it. What I liked about her work was that it had a nostalgic and
romantic mood with mysterious juxtapositions that could fit the brand. I sent
her one of my first thoughts (see below) to see if she would work with me on this.

Here are a just a few of the idea's we passed back and forth by email when we began
working on the project:

Below is the final ad which we shot in New York. The ad ran in a number of
mags including the wonderful but now defunct, Domino Magazine and here are

a couple of pages from the look book.