Necessity

I’m away from home turf, in Bucharest … styling a big advertising shoot.

Traveling to other countries for the purposes of work is nothing new… but thinking that you can just travel and things will be the same is never going to work.

I have 2 lovely Romanian girls helping me prep the job … they know the city, and the nature of the work.

The traffic and parking are bad, even for London standards. We have a driver who waits while we dive into shops trying to find whatever we need…sounds easy right?

Nice in principle, but things are not so easy when you move away from our usual ‘world of plenty’.

For instance… we needed to buy some parcel type labels, so that we could keep easy track on each of the 72 costumes in this story.Only problem….they don’t have them here… no joke…no stationary shops. What we do is stop by an art shop… buy some large pieces of card… stop by the haberdashers… (plenty of those here… it puts London to shame), buy some simple cotton tape. We cut up the paper into squares, punch holes in each of them, cut the tape into lengths, thread it through and bingo….we have our tags… and they are lovely

Similarly, in the haberdashery store. I notice a glorious display of zips… not in the usual plastic packaging that we are used to, but simply bunched up in size and colour order with elastic bands. They look stunning, like hugely colourful carnations.

And working on the final bits and pieces of prep before we shoot, I hemmed some trousers, cutting off the excess fabric and put in into the rubbish bin. ‘Oh no!’… said my girls… fishing it out of the bin… they might use it to make a patchwork, or it might come in useful on another project. The fabric was an ‘opportunity’ they said. It was definitely too useful to be in with the rubbish.

I have been reminded of lessons I learned long ago, but had got out of the habit of following…that necessity really is the mother of invention.

and the results can be individual, interesting and beautiful.