STORIES FROM THE SET: FOLK FORAY FOLLIES

If you thought the Folk Foray collection was fun, you should’ve been on the photoshoot!

For starters, we had two major factors working in our favor – two things that are typically obstacles we’re fighting against on a shoot – and that’s that 1) the whole shoot, start to finish, was shot inside, and 2) we were right in our own little home base!

As you know, because of the way production schedules work and print deadlines and all that, we shoot our collections in opposite seasons, and they’re almost always outside, which means we’re constantly working against the weather. The girls are either freezing in shorts and sundresses or sweating in leather jackets pants. For Folk Foray, though, we fabricated the set inside our Yoakum warehouse, so we were able to climate control. Incidentally, we still didn’t manage to create a comfortable (and complaint-free) climate, because apparently, “Mitchell keeps it too cold!” But hey, no wind, no chasing daylight, no bugs – we’ll take it.

The other major advantage we had this time was that we were shooting in Yoakum, in our own space, which is really rare for us. Y’all likely don’t fully understand the extent to which that affects a photoshoot and how many headaches it alleviates, but it is a game-changer in terms of logistics. For starters, we only have to board a few people rather than the whole team. We have the support of our whole staff right next door, so we don’t need to bring a whole extra set of hands to handle meals and transport and errands. No one has to drive a Uhaul full of every prop imaginable halfway across the country. We can set up in advance, and then day of, just show up, shoot, and leave everything at the end of the day to come back the next day with it ready to go; assembling and disassembling a set is possibly the most time-consuming and labor-intensive part of any photoshoot (though styling is a close second).

The universe wasn’t going to let us off the hook that easy, though – and would it even be a DDR shoot if we didn’t have an “Oh no, now what are we going to do?” moment? Those doors you see throughout the Folk Foray photography, those beautiful vibrant backdrops that made the collection really pop… Those. Things. Were. Heavy. We really underestimated how difficult they would be to hang/set/arrange and it took some serious ingenuity and even more serious rigging to create what seemed like it should’ve been a simple set. But alas, we prevailed, and as always, in the end, the juice was worth the squeeze.

Don’t think that just because we weren’t in some scenic destination that we didn’t have our fair share of fun! You simply can’t get this group together without making some memories. Lozzie may be the unofficial TikTok star of our troupe, but Mitchell might be about to give her a run for her money. Y’all remember the Applebee’s commercial and/or the choreographed dance to “Fancy Like”? Yeah, Mitchell knows it. And he treated us to a little performance that we were just lucky enough to capture on camera. Enjoy!