7 Women, 4 countries, 1 colourful dress. Here is my story with the Colourful dress for the Travelling Dress Collective

Last year I was lucky to join with over 20 British photographers in a Travelling Dress Collective (The Travelling Mustard Project), where each photographer had the same dress to shoot with and use their creative vision, before sending it off to the next person. It was great fun and I thoroughly enjoyed it, so imagine my delight when I was invited to join another Travelling Dress Collective Project!

The Colourful Travelling Dress Collective

The dress picked by the group was a colourful, floaty ombre dress. The dress site had given the name and called the dress, ‘Splendour of the Sunset’, which you could see why below. I had seen it online and fell in love with its bold colours and versatility to wear the dress in two different ways. I think all my fellow photographers in the group thought I was crazy when I had put forward the dress to them, and I would be honest that the dress is not normally one I would either choose to wear myself. But I am so glad when my group agreed to accept the challenge of creating images with the dress and I could not wait for my turn with it. 

The colourful dress came through the U.S. and Canada before it then reached me in England. Each photographer got one week to photograph with the dress before we had to pass it onto the next person in the group. 

I knew immediately when I was asked to work with the dress that I wanted to have some portraits of myself in the dress. Having done a fair number of self-portraits, I knew the vision and feel I wanted to create and convey through my portraits. I do not always find it comfortable doing self-portraiture, however, I continue to love pursuing it as a way to express myself through my art and photography.

My concept and vision for the dress were simple. I wanted to see what the dress was like on me when it arrived before I decided on the photos I wanted to make with the dress. So I have to say that I did not give much time to planning my photos, but instead let my instinct guide my vision, which naturally turned out to be a bit playful and slightly whimsical. It made me laugh to imagine my tomboyish childhood self in the long, flowing dress, which with the bold yet feminine style of the dress gave me the inspiration!

I really enjoyed the challenge of doing something creative with the dress and coming up with different portraits. This was in spite of the added challenge of working in between the wet weather in August! I would also like to thank my dear husband for helping me to create these portraits, as I enlisted him to hold the camera and click the shutter while I ran back and forth or practically throw myself to create movement in the photos. I had set my settings on my camera, given lots of guidance and made several attempts with the portraits until I was happy I had got the vision. 

The dress was then sent to my photographer friend, Cindy Knight, in Russia before finally returning back to the U.S. Only then did each photographer in the group reveal their photos, which was the most exciting part of the Travelling Dress Project as we were then able to see the creative style and vision each photographer made with the dress. I am so grateful to our group leader Jyotsna Bhamidipati, for bringing our group together and to all the individual artists and photographers I got to do this project with Bree Friesen, Michelle Pellachini, Cindy Knight, Leslie Schoen, and Christina McLauchlin. All of them are incredibly inspiring and talented, and I encourage you to see the images they made with the colourful dress.