Betsey Johnson

I don't shoot a lot of fashion-related stuff...at least not when compared with all the other music and celebrity oriented material that I normally do.  Thus, I don't get to shoot many fashion icons.  What's a fashion icon?  Someone who puts their own stamp on the industry without necessarily being a supermodel.  Of course, most of the people who do this are fashion designers, and one of the more prolific ones, as far as young womens' fashion is concerned, is Betsey Johnson.  Hey whimsical and often silly clothes have been adorning the racks for a number of decades now.  So, when given the opportunity to photograph Betsey as part of a 10-year anniversary celebration for that L.A. landmark The Grove, my curiosity was piqued. I mean, just how was this going to play out?  Betsey is a woman who is most definitely used to getting her way, and as a fashion icon at the age of 70, she has the power to be intimidating if she so chooses.  So when I arrived at Nordstroms at The Grove yesterday, I was on my best behavior.

As it turned out, this was an excellent strategy to follow, because it ended up putting me in an unexpected position--to do a private photo session with Betsey in her dressing room before she was to go out to do a meet-and-greet on the main floor with her legions of young female fans (who paid $50 a pop to sit down with her a get a photo taken).  I actually wasn't supposed to be up there, as I found out that I didn't have an "official" press invite, just a general media one.  However, thanks to an errant Nordstroms employee who delivered me to the dressing room instead of the downstairs press area, I got the scoop that none of my colleagues downstairs was gonna get.  Betsey was running late, trying to sandwich in some last minute interviews before her exit, and I was told I was going to have about one minute with her to make this work.  That's right. One minute.  Needless to say, I double-checked everything on my gear to make sure it was all functioning normally.

The door opened, and there was Betsey.  Energetic, bubbly and darned near effervescent, she bounded right over to say hello in a gold lame dress that was a 13-year old girl's idea of heaven, and which could only have come from her.  Her publicist suggested that we use a blank wall covered with white linen, but Betsey had other ideas, and immediately bounded over to a leather love seat and perched herself on top of it.  "Whew," I thought to myself, "This is gonna go a bit easier than I thought, now that Betsey's taking charge", and thankfully I was correct about that.  Of course, she's had years and years to figure out what kind of shots make her clothes work, so I imagine this was all quite second-nature to her.  In any event, we joked in between shots, particularly about her shoes, which I commented would be great instruments of self-defense thanks to their numerous spikes.  I was a bit worried about direct flash exposure, as I naturally had no time to get cute with off-camera strobes.  Luckily, the entire room was draped with that white linen, so there was a certain degree of bounce created by that linen which softened everything a little bit.  But before long it was all over, and I made my way downstairs to the press area to cover Betsey's entrance.  That part of the shoot was almost anti-climactic for me, even though the room was buzzing thanks to her fans who were going nuts.  As I said, I'd already gotten what I needed.  Just another day at the office...