Shooting babies. And children.

..is what we did yesterday. My wonderful "mother-in-law" / grandmother of my daughter M lent us her beautiful grounds and yes, her DOUBLE DECKER ROUTEMASTER BUS to photograph the Baby Issa collection on the incredibly well-behaved and charismatic babies and children of our friends and friends of friends who all kindly volunteered to drive out to Windsor on a Saturday morning. But more on that later.

First let's get down to business - the nitty gritty of planning a photo shoot.

As i stated in my previous post, before anyone can buy your product they need to be made aware of its existence. This can be done multiple ways and take endless variations and use endless mediums. What I think is as important to your brand image as your product and service is to FILL A SPACE IN THE MARKET. What is not being done, or what is not being done well. Every single business that Richard Branson has ever started is built on that premise. I'm not saying we should all do business like Virgin, but we should all be very aware of what is out there, what isn't and what the market (our potential customers) is looking for / not getting. This does not mean "provide what people need" more provide what people w a n t. They don't need to know they want it, that's your job - see the iPod for example. There were plenty of mp3 players on the market. But they made us want, actually, scrap that, they made us NEED them. Remember when every subway / tube train was awash with white headphones? When every billboard that wasn't a black silhouette dancing against a solid colour background was boring? When we all wanted to be in the same club - and the signifier was the white headphones?!

THAT is good marketing.

CREATING a space in peoples' minds (and hearts and budgets) for your product / service.

1. The Concept

When we researched what other baby and kids brands were doing in terms of marketing, we realised that there was definitely a massive space out there. A space called "FUN". Most baby and kids' ads (esp in the luxury market segment) are bafflingly bad. They fail to make me connect. The babies and children pictured leave me cold. That is a feat to pull off in itself!

My daughter is 18 months old and what I experience over and over again with her is that we get on the bus, or find ourselves in a given public place, and random strangers that would ordinarily pass me by, will make eye contact and smile, laugh, make silly faces, in short "embarrass" themselves. When it comes to babies, people do not feel inhibited. They connect and instantly form a relationship, no matter how fleeting. This relationship is innocent, it is trusting, it is beautiful. It's similar with animals. Very few people do not connect with animals or babies. And yet, most ads out there groom and tweak the kids to a degree that they are unrecognisable as innocent, innately beautiful and trusting and turn them into mini mannequins, airbrushed to "perfection", posing for the cameras. If anything, they become slightly sleazy, a bit too self-conscious and in some really bad cases, uncomfortably "sexy".

- Sorry, RL. (copyright Ralph Lauren kids)

So we make the obvious our target: create a campaign and catalogue that allows viewers to connect with the subjects. Like Issa, Baby Issa is all about ease, about having fun, about making the ordinary special, about living "the lucky life" on an everyday basis.
That is the premise of the business, that is what Daniella had in mind when she designed the dresses and that is what we want to communicate with our images and promotional materials.

2. Planning

Next, we did two things

a. start collecting images, video, and ideas for our photo shoot...
These were as varied as pages ripped from magazines - for instance Marc Jacob's campaign for Daisy - as scenes from movies - the most unlikely being one of the last scenes from Knocked up (!), when they are preparing a birthday party and the light is streaming through the womens' and childrens' hair .

(copyright of Marc Jacobs)

b. start compiling a team...
Who was the best photographer to capture children at play in their natural state? Who could help us evoke a world that the viewer would want to enter? What was the most versatile location that would provide a sense of safety for the kids to let loose as well as being a beautiful backdrop for our images? Which kids would we use? Models? Kids scouted at the park? Our own and friends' children? Etc etc. Once we had compiled our images and assembled out team, it was most important to communicate as much as possible to create as distinct an idea of our dream result as possible and to avoid any unneccesary difficulties. For most of us, this was the first time we were working with kids and we were unsure what to expect.

- The lovely Alice (Issa's PR girl, who has been working over time to help out with Baby Issa) and Rob (producer of the photo shoot) manically coordinating babies, parents, transportation, cameras etc on their bbs.

3. Organising

The third stage is getting it all ready, AKA

• choosing which products to shoot
• choosing which "model" would wear what
• buying, customising and making accessories to create a complete "Baby Issa look"
• meeting, telephoning and emailing endlessly about ideas, locations, call sheets, contact details etc - of course this includes liaising with 20 pairs of parents about what where who why and how.
• deciding on and staying within the budget
• setting a time line for everything - aka photo shoot, post production, printing, binding etc

- my notes..

In the end, we decided to ask our friends and acquaintances whether they would kindly bring their kids to Windsor and let us photograph them in Baby Issa clothes. It just seemed the most natural thing to do and it worked brilliantly. There was a real sense of community, if not family, at the shoot - the parents were incredibly helpful, patient and kind, the kids were all incredible personalities, including their appearance, and our photographer Philippe Kliot gamely ran around with them all day, capturing their energy, spirits and innocence.

4. Editing and Post-production

As we're under time pressure to compile a preliminary look book for the childrens' trade fair Pitti Bimbo in Florence, where we plan to launch Baby Issa this month, Philippe stayed up til 3 am editing and roughly photo shopping the images, playing with different light and colours.
He, Daniella and I all met in the afternoon to finalise which images we want to use for the look book and we were all incredibly pleased with the result. Not only do the dresses and little boy shorts, polo shirts and hair accessories look beautiful, the images are incredibly evocative and really create a sense of the "Printed World of Baby Issa"!!!


The Baby Whisperer.

Hello, my name is Pia and I'm calling from Baby Issa...

I don't know how many times I have said that sentence this week and even less of a clue what it meant to most people who heard it, since Baby Issa is only a couple of weeks old... though, as I was to find out this week - she is very advanced for a girl her age!!

When Daniella Issa Helayel first approached me about developing Baby Issa earlier this year, I thought it was an amazing fit.

Daniella and I have known each other since 2005 when I did my first ever fashion internship at her budding womenswear line Issa London. At the time it was based in her mews house in Paddington - there were three employees in total, a bunch of interns running errands and friends and socialites who loved Daniella's charisma, charm and dresses were helping out any which way they could. It was an amazing time and none of us will ever forget the unique energy surrounding it all.

Since then Issa London has become an established brand sold in some 80+ shops around the world and Kate Middleton is rumoured to be getting married in Issa...

In the meantime I have assisted Daniella numerous times over the years from selling her collection at a trade fair in Paris to helping at her New York fashion Week debut when I was living over there in 2007.
Since then, I have completed my BA in Fashion Design with Marketing from Central St Martins, had a baby and am currently completing my MA in International Business Management. - As I said, a perfect fit with Baby Issa.

But as usual in life, everything is more complicated, challenging and rewarding than originally expected...

Daniella asked me for a proposal for how I would go about building the Baby Issa brand and so I prepared one. It was my first "pitch" and I consulted a handful of people who I thought could help. My expectations were surpassed to such a degree by my friends, family and one stranger that had been roped in by my tutour that I went to bed feeling like the luckiest girl in the world the night I sent it off.

The pitch was amazing and I still think that's how I would have gone about starting up a company - if it hadn't already been started!

Which is what I realised when I started working at Baby Issa last week: I am not starting up anything; I am entering a project that has already commenced, that incredibly talented and hard-working people have already poured hours of effort and thought into, that several mainline Issa employees have given time to and that Daniella herself is totally obsessed with... see below.

So instead of being my own boss heading up a start-up without a budget, as I had originally expected, I am now the main assistant to Daniella and only official employee of Baby Issa, which gives me more and less responsibility at the same time.

Now that I have set the scene, I will start blogging about what I am doing, continuing, scrapping and starting... tbc tomorrow.

Momma loves you.

PS: still figuring out this html business so please forgive any "construction" faults or lay-out deficiencies..

Willkommen, Bienvenue, Weeelcome!

As you can see in the Title line (I chose the letter colours to complement Baby Bowie), this is my blog about developing a Baby and Childrenswear fashion line: Baby Issa!

It will concern in equal parts

- the business aspect of starting up a company (though I must mention that we are a very lucky Baby indeed: we have a very well established 'Mother company' in the womenswear brand Issa London and will be building as many synergies as we can AKA leeching off their infrastructure, amazing staff and materials as much as possible)

- the creative aspect of developing a fashion line (though thankfully, it will hopefully be less complex than womenswear fashion, since babies and kids to a degree, are mainly required to look cute and wear clothes that let them explore freely AKA none of the usual "latex is the new black" or "floral is so last season". Playful, easy to wear and functional is timeless.


...and of course, there will be photos, videos and real time real talk about working on this specific project, with this specific team - I always find that detailed, specific anecdotes teach the most useful and generally applicable lessons...



Peas out