Behind the scenes

Fashion seems to be todays fastlane to celebrity. Everybody wants to be Carine Roitfeld overnight and be dressed with free designer clothes from head to toe.

They're barely twenty years old, they open a blog and copy and paste articles from one blog to another, then dress up like Lady Gaga on a bad hair day to pop at fashion shows they're not even invited to , and then declare they are fashion editors.



Samir Bahrir, Art Director , and Nicolas Chicanot , Editor in Chief, going through the images to edit the shooting



Here at Lash Magazine , we do see things differently. We're all in our early 30's and did work for more than 10 years in the fashion business, working for prestigious publications such as Tetu, Harper's Bazaar, West East , etc...

When we decided to launch the magazine in July 2010, we had numerous meetings about what we can do and wanted to do. We are very proud of producing every single picture of the magazine, instead of collecting Vogue spreads from the net.

We are , as i said before , producing every image. So it's a long process and it requires professionals to set everything there.



Model Dimphy Janse shot by Photographer Tess Feuilhade



As the magazine comes with a theme, we have meetings within the three of us (we are a small team growing up ) to define the theme, the shootings that could relate and then picking the photographers that could relate to the theme. Then the production really starts.

Ouafa Moutaki , in charge of the Production and Coordination , sets the date of shoot with the photographer, books the studio, the Hair and Make up artists and supervise the casting done by the photographer, and basically makes sure that everything is running smooth on the D-day.

Nicolas Chicanot, Editor in chief, when doing the styling, is in charge of collecting the right clothes and accessories related to the upcoming shooting. It takes about a week to get all the clothing , accessories and jewellery to complete the styling.

It's not a matter of a couple of emails and some phone calls to get it done. He needs to go from a press office to a Haute Couture House by himself to make his selection, running around Paris for about a week.



A view of the styling required to do a fashion story , not to mention that it's only a part of it and most of the time it doesn't fit in the frame.



During the shooting , everybody is busy. Samir Bahrir, the Art Director, has a constant conversation with the photographer and the stylist to be sure that the shooting is coherent and matches with its original idea.

Hair dressers, Make up Artists and Manicure are working on emphasize the model's beauty. Not to mention that each one of them is working on a regular basis with the world most pretigious magazines ( from Italian Vogue to British Harper's Bazaar )

A regular day of shooting is about 10 hours , but often exceeds to 12 or 14. It's always exciting to see some informal ideas coming to reality but it is really exhausting both physically and mentally.

We have to stay aware of any single details like a bad draping in a dress or a misplaced bracelet, paying attention that everybody is happy with the ongoing shooting, and keep our eyes opened and stay focused for the shooting to be coherent.

It's not easy or hard , it's a real job. And some people went on us to ask the magazine to be monthly or even weekly , but for now the magazine is set to be published every two months.

We really want to maintain the quality we are proud to present as the third issue is just out and we're in the middle of producing the 4th and 5th issue

We hope you will stay faithfull to us and keep on sending us your great feedback on facebook or twitter.

More exciting news to come very soon so stay tuned....