Photography and Text by Charlotte Xu, Copyright 2016
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APHRODITE
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Since I was young, I have developed a hobby of collecting scarves. They are simple, economical accessories to transform one’s daily outerwear in an amazing way, and thus have become my personal fashion staple. In this series I was trying to create a brand, showcasing this personal styling favorite. The name “Aphrodite” comes from the Roman adaption of the goddess of beauty and love Venus. This is inspired by the brand “Pandora”, a female bracelet seller that also uses a famous female figure from Greek mythology. I thought the name not only fit perfectly to my vision but also had an intriguing, classic, mysterious component. To associate the brand more tightly with my personal taste, I used the tagline “Modern classy beauty” and “Elegant, exquisite, feminine”. What I want to express is that this brand is unique among most fast fashion and the people who buy it belong to a particular group that have classic, sophisticated taste.
I did the styling by myself. My female friend and I both wore simple black crewneck tops and black leggings to highlight the scarves picked. I picked natural colors for makeup but used a significant amount of highlighting and shadowing products to contour the faces, as Asian faces tend to be flatter in photography compared with other races’ features. The subjects in the ads (myself included) wore black contacts so that our eyes would pop out more. This effort proved worthwhile, as I found the post production a lot simpler as both of us were not professional models.
For the shoot, I selected two outdoor locations and used available light. One is the exterior of a church at 38th and Chestnut Streets and the other is the botanical garden at Penn. The church has a magnificent crimson exterior and a beautiful, classic patio. They turned out to be great backgrounds to add the classic, mysterious ambience to the photos. When we moved to the botanical garden, unfortunately the sun light was already not strong enough, therefore I had to do lots of post-production modifications for exposure increase and color enhancement. However, we were still able to catch the changing color of the leaves. The composition of the garden was very beautiful itself alone with a small hill and a pond. The photos turned out to be filled with colors and nature which delivers the sense of tranquility I felt when producing the ads.
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About The Author: Charlotte Xu is enrolled in the Masters program at the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania.
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