Behind the Resort Campaign
We just shot our resort campaign on an alien planet… I mean the salt flats in Utah. As a platform selling some of the most cutting-edge global emerging designers we knew we couldn’t just shoot our resort campaign at the pool or at the beach, so here’s the story of what we did instead.
The process began months in advance as we started onboarding select swimwear and summer-wear designers. As the collections arrived in our warehouse, we began to solidify exactly how we wanted to shoot the campaign. We knew we were already going to be in LA in May so why not go to Salt Lake City, a short $48 flight away, to shoot in the crazy natural phenomena that is the Salt Flats?!
We didn’t really have a budget for this shoot, so we knew we would have to get creative to make this campaign happen. Our best bet would be finding local models and photographers to work with but it became apparent how hard it was to find people when none of us have networks in SLC. Our e-commerce manager, Amaia Anderson, had the brilliant idea to post a model and photographer call video, showing the shoot location and a sneak peek of the pieces we were shooting.
It worked and the video had our DMs flooded with people wanting to be involved! An accomplished photographer within our network of creatives, Alanna Durkee, happened to be planning a trip to SLC on our exact shoot date!
It was still proving difficult to find models. We had the epiphany that no one embodies Ap0cene more than us, so Ap0cene team members Lexi Kingery, Amaia Anderson, and Ami Song modeled the looks they styled.
While we were in LA, we met up with our two LA-based employees who are both incredible stylists, Lexi and Ami, to style their looks for the campaign. Mixing Lexi and Ami’s styling pieces with Chantelle Lucyl swimsuits, Nash Dunlop skirts, and Mew pieces created masterpieces of outfits.
The full team arrived in SLC a day before the shoot. The morning of, we all drove to the salt flats in our rental minivan and picked up Alanna on the way, who we had never met IRL until then. We immediately all hit it off! We drove right out onto the salt flats where we set up a little camp complete with a changing tent. We shot for hours and couldn’t get over how ethereal everything looked. Shout out to Ami for her behind the scenes shots on her Y2K point and shoot.
We found a rest stop right down the street with the perfect aesthetic where we shot Lexi in looks by Mew Swimwear. There was something so hauntingly beautiful about this spot that had us all in awe.
Turns out we were shooting all day on a giant reflector (aka the salt flats) with direct sun, and we were so preoccupied we forgot to apply sunscreen. We definitely learned our lesson. We wrapped up the shoot tired and hungry, but proud we had pulled it off with little resources. We ended the day with some fast food and went back to our Airbnb to nurse our insane sunburns.
