22 Days of Naomi

So Naomi Campbell is obviously the Godmother of Modeling. 

I shot this one B&W shot with photographer Renaud Lucas one day back in 2014, that was inspired by one of the greatest models in the world, Naomi Campbell…and it came out FIRE. It was so good that I sat and thought, “What if I recreated a couple of Naomi’s images?” Then I thought, “ When is her birthday? What if I recreated 22 images? One for every day leading up to her birthday??!!!” I thought it was an amazing idea!!! But the idea soon became a faint thought on my brainstem. 

I had this idea sitting on my brain for … get this…8 YEARS!!!! I had thought a couple of times to bring the idea to fruition…but the timing wasn’t right. I hadn’t found the right person I could creatively dance with. 

 

I had mentioned the idea to Andrew Millar @vision_studios_photography and literally, in seconds he said…”So when are we shooting?” Instantly my brain started brewing and concepts started flowing. I looked up images that I could even begin to accomplish in enough time to conquer the task at hand. I was the stylist, makeup artist, hair stylist, and creative director, Andy was the photographer and we retouched the images together, me on the skin retouching, and andy on the technical portion of the editing. We were literally a two-man team! 

 

I had such a blast tackling this challenge to pay homage to AND nail images of one of the best models in the history of modeling! I would literally be planning in the morning and shooting three to four looks at night! And as soon as we’d finished a shoot, images were selected, narrowed down, and edited to be posted over the next couple of days until we had to shoot again the next day. The way some of my looks were rigged up was unimaginable! I had a dress in my hair, images were composited, and we are not going to get into where the tail on my neck came from! Ha! 

 

Things were going so well, I felt amazing and the feedback was insane! But just like with any ups…there were some major downs. I had been hiding behind my creativity to cope with the death of my grandmother, Duchess Montana, back in February. We were working so hard that I had been forgetting to eat and hydrate…and guess what?? I ended up in the emergency room. But it still didn’t stop the show… Because I was still editing with my MacBook in my lap and writhing in pain, making sure I had an image edited to kick out for the day. I was so determined to complete the task at hand, not even a little pain could stop me. The worst of all, right before the final images were shot and edited, Andy’s mother passed away. We pushed through, persevered and we came out on top. 

 

 

I was inspired by the likes of Karl Lagerfeld, Steven Meisel, Mert and Marcus, Ellen Von Unworth, and Steven Klein just to name a few! So thank you to the photographers and all their teams for making Naomi so perfect that just her existence is an inspiration. Even better I thank my mother for making me confident enough, bold enough, and great enough and for making me the Kaye Cox Way!!!