Ella Rose Muse: the story: Gilded Mirrors and Stuffed Moose: Chanticleer Brides 25th Anniversary Collection

Tuesday, 28 January 2014

Gilded Mirrors and Stuffed Moose: Chanticleer Brides 25th Anniversary Collection

Yesterday I did something terrifying and wonderful for my career - putting yourself 'out there' is such a scary buzz, but I sometimes can't resist aiming high and trying for big things. I really hope it works out and I hear back soon!! In the afternoon I was drawn in silver, and today I'm cultivating patience (kinda).

And the day after I got back from Australia, at the beginning of December, I modelled for Chanticleer Brides latest (25th anniversary) wedding dress collection. The theme was 20s/Downton Abbey, and we shot at the incredibly eccentric location that is Maunsel House, in Somerset. Taxidermy everywhere, enormous paintings, huge windows, copper baths. Not sure it's quite to my personal taste for a house to actually live in (well, I definitely wouldn't say no to the bath, or the incredible four poster bed in the king's suite), but it's definitely 'fabulous, darling'. ;-)

Having modelled a previous collection (the 'Back to Nature' outdoors shoot a couple of years ago), I knew what to expect; intricate, exquisite hand-made detailing by the designer, Tracey, and a range of cuts for different personalities of brides. Having been down under, the dresses weren't made to fit me (as they obviously would be for a bride; Tracey would normally do about 3 fittings before a wedding day), but they looked good anyway; the team are a talented bunch!

All images by the lovely Chris Hanley, who gamely took up the challenge of photographing 18 dresses, cramming tripods into the most unlikely dark corners (all without knocking over the the suits of armour) and succeeding despite there being absolutely no clear spaces in the entire house! Clutter ruled. :-)

Make up was by Ashleigh Gregory, and the hair styling was done by Dean Brindley.

Behind the scenes video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYYhTwCZHXI :-)

I was bright and ready to go very early in the morning (oh how I wish that early-morning-riser self had lasted into the winter; I seem now to have morphed into a night owl!!!), but the jet lag seriously started kicking in at around 4pm, which was the middle of the night for me. I was pretty exhausted by the end, but I'm so glad to have been asked to model for Tracey again. It was so much fun! Anyone in any danger of getting married any time soon should definitely check out the website and go and visit the shop in Cheltenham: www.chanticleerbrides.co.uk

Walter De La Mare, 'The Listeners'

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses

Of the forest’s ferny floor:

And a bird flew up out of the turret,

Above the Traveller’s head:

And he smote upon the door again a second time;

‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;

No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners

That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,

That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

By the lonely Traveller’s call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

’Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote on the door, even

Louder, and lifted his head:—

‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word,’ he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Natasha Khan/Bat for Lashes, 'Horse and I'

Got woken in the night,
by a mystic golden light.
My head soaked in river water.
I had been dressed in a coat of armor. They called
a horse out of the woodland.
"Take her there, through the desert shores."
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear.
You're the chosen one, there's no turning back now."

The smell of redwood giants.
The banquet for the shadows.
Horse and I, we're dancers in the dark.
Came upon the headdress.
It was gilded, dark and golden.
The children sang.
I was so afraid I took it to my head and prayed.
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear. You're the chosen one, there's no turning back."
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear. You're the chosen one, there's no turning back."

Mark Doty, 'A Display of Mackerel'

They lie in parallel rows,

on ice, head to tail,

each a foot of luminosity

barred with black bands,

which divide the scales’

radiant sections

like seams of lead

in a Tiffany window.

Iridescent, watery

prismatics: think abalone,

the wildly rainbowed

mirror of a soapbubble sphere,

think sun on gasoline.

Splendor, and splendor,

and not a one in any way

distinguished from the other

—nothing about them

of individuality. Instead

they’re all exact expressions

of the one soul,

each a perfect fulfilment

of heaven’s template,

mackerel essence. As if,

after a lifetime arriving

at this enameling, the jeweler’s

made uncountable examples,

each as intricate

in its oily fabulation

as the one before

Suppose we could iridesce,

like these, and lose ourselves

entirely in the universe

of shimmer—would you want

to be yourself only,

unduplicatable, doomed

to be lost? They’d prefer,

plainly, to be flashing participants,

multitudinous. Even now

they seem to be bolting

forward, heedless of stasis.

They don’t care they’re dead

and nearly frozen,

just as, presumably,

they didn’t care that they were living:

all, all for all,

the rainbowed school

and its acres of brilliant classrooms,

in which no verb is singular,

or every one is. How happy they seem,

even on ice, to be together, selfless,

which is the price of gleaming.

Kate Clanchy, 'Poem for a Man with No Sense of Smell'

This is simply to inform you:

that the thickest line in the kink of my hand
smells like the feel of an old school desk,
the deep carved names worn sleek with sweat;

that beneath the spray of my expensive scent
my armpits sound a bass note strong
as the boom of a palm on a kettle drum;

that the wet flush of my fear is sharp
as the taste of an iron pipe, midwinter,
on a child's hot tongue; and that sometimes,

in a breeze, the delicate hairs on the nape
of my neck, just where you might bend
your head, might hesitate and brush your lips,

hold a scent frail and precise as a fleet
of tiny origami ships, just setting out to sea.

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Tuesday, 28 January 2014

Gilded Mirrors and Stuffed Moose: Chanticleer Brides 25th Anniversary Collection