My love of vintage fashion definitely stems from shapewear and lingerie, but over the years I’ve grown to love the synthetic fabrics of vintage cocktail dresses that often make an appearance in front of my camera. Whilst I never seem to be able to find anything myself when rummaging through a vintage sale, I always get excited when a client tells me they’ve found something amazing and will be bringing it along with them to a shoot! In this particular instance, Felicity Furore‘s recently acquired collection of vintage cocktail dresses from a local theatre’s costume clear out provided the perfect concept for a last minute shoot when our original plans were postponed back in September. With a day set aside for shooting already booked out in the diary, Felicity packed a suitcase of goodies and met me in the quiet suburbs of London.

The British weather was as unpredictable as ever that day, flitting between hard sunlight and imminent rain clouds, so most of the shoot was spent sheltered under the vine covered walkways of the pergola, using my Elinchrom ELB 400 lights to illuminate Felicity. Although these images were shot in colour, Felicity’s classic features – accompanied by the collection of dresses – lent themselves well to a black and white series. I did make an exception for the pink dress though, which stands out perfectly on the leafy greens behind her.

With so many of my shoots planned well in advance for client briefs, it was lovely to get out of the studio and take images completely unrestricted. It gave me the opportunity to relax on the shoot, be more playful and try new things both in camera and during post production. We shot several different vintage inspired looks on the day, which I’m sure will feature on the blog at a later stage. For now here are some images of Felicity in my two favourite cocktail dresses of the day.

Inspired? Book your own boudoir shoot with me today – check out my boudoir photography packages here and then drop me an email with your preferred date. I can’t wait to hear from you!