About Me
Hi! I'm Olivia and I am a fashion graduate from Falmouth University
The playful style of my fashion photography focuses on capturing exciting colour worlds, utilising the beauty of natural lighting on location. My photographic practice has encouraged a real love of styling and costume design too, in which I construct my garments and accessories by hand, often through the use of upcycled, pre-loved, natural or found materials.
I have found such enjoyment through working from the heart and creating a portfolio which is the perfect embodiment of the type of fashion imagery I am passionate about. I find that my creativity and zest for building stories through fashion thrives in the roles of art direction, styling, photography and outfit construction and design, as well as when I am immersed in fashion illustration in the conceptual stages of projects.
INSPIRATION
When faced with restrictions and limitations, your only outlet is creativity
Living in Cornwall for the past three years has given me the opportunity to freely explore and become very connected to the outside world and its many hidden landscapes both natural and urban, opening my eyes to the power of contextual scenery in fashion imagery. My Final Major Project publication, ‘persōna’, captures a broad series of colourful, excessively styled figures placed in unexciting, ordinary environments, symbolising how fashion is used as a facade to disguise our true selves and backgrounds.
Being forced to work with the restrictions of the pandemic for a large period of my university journey, my drive for achieving originality in imagery and styling pushed me to use an innovative mindset and honest creativity through designing and styling my own fashion to overcome these limitations. The influences of ‘persōna’ were taken from my personal reflection on how physical decoration of our bodies can empower us, but yet to the outsider it can sometimes misrepresent the life we lead alongside it.
MY WORK
PORTFOLIOS
DETAIL
Fashion is a persona in physical form
When we decorate our bodies in a particular way, society often subconsciously expects us to act accordingly. Assumptions, whether true or not, are made on our background, class, our home, our wealth, etc. When we observe someone’s dress at first glance, we often instinctively categorise them in all of these areas; this is why fashion is so powerful a tool in displaying the persona we strive to be associated with. Through the juxtaposition of the flamboyant, theatrically styled characters placed within realistic, commonplace environments, I wanted there to be a real visual emphasis on the idea that we use fashion as a method of glamorising aspects of our lives which are otherwise unglamorous. These landscapes aim to reveal a more vulnerable, personal aspect of a character’s life unexpected of their eccentric physical image and fashion, symbolising our romanticised version of ourselves we often want to exhibit to the outside world - our persona.
Using a blank canvas to craft and style fashion from the design stage enabled me to create garments and accessories which perfectly embodied the essence of many individualistic, eccentric identities.
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