By: Natasha Winston Clarke
Brooklyn, NY, September 3, 2021
Let me just start off by saying that I was extremely late to the park. When Ivy Park first dropped, I was in my Junior year of college. At that time, I was shopping around in order to build my streetwear wardrobe. I was into Nike tech suits, Jordan drops, Adidas tracksuits, and Yeezy sneakers. I wasn't too focused on a particular brand.
When I first heard Beyoncé was debuting Ivy Park, I loved the ads for it! The campaigning for it was amazing, but I wasn't interested. At the time, Ivy Park went over my head.
If there's anything that stressed me out more, it was ordering on StockX. I was mass ordering every week, so it kept locking me out my account for a few days due to “suspicious activity.” Contacting anyone for support was a frustrating process I had to go through every time since support was almost non-existent. Besides getting in contact with support, the resell prices compared to the retail prices felt like highway robbery on some items. Frankly, shopping on StockX made it even more convincing to just shop when new collections release.
On the other hand, I researched the sizes and how the clothes fit because you can't return on StockX—only sell. So, I found the answer I was looking for and bought my first two Ivy Park pieces: The brown bodysuit and the white sweatpants. It came in the mail days later, I tried them on, and when I tell you all I LOOKED and FELT BRAND NEW, I said, “BITCHHHHHHHH.” The bodysuit was giving what needed to be gave and the sweatpants were the perfect streetwear style I was looking for.
At that moment, I became OBSESSED with Ivy Park! I began mass researching, following every verified social media page, looking at the different colorways, the collections! I even watched try-on hauls on YouTube to help visualize what the pieces would look like.
At first, I was only supposed to buy the brown colorway from Icy Park, but that didn't happen because wearing the brown Ivy Park bra convinced me to buy more. When I started my Ivy Park journey, I was THREE COLLECTIONS LATE and I had to catch up using StockX despite the prices.
The matching sets and ensembles were my favorite regarding Ivy Park. I was trying to break into those styles, but putting outfits together in that sense was not coming to me.”
Certain colorways, I felt iffy about, so I watched try-on hauls on YouTube to help me get an idea of what the outfits looked like, was I really sure about that color/piece? Can I rock it? Where do I see myself wearing this? I ended up throwing all those questions out the window and just going with what I wanted.
Then one day, I just randomly came up with the idea to do a photo shoot because I wanted to do something BIG with all these outfits. I extensively looked for photographers to fit the main requirements I wanted: can they photograph black women well? Do they photograph black women enough? Does their outside photo shoots match the streetwear style aesthetic that I love. I narrowed one of my choices down to Marta Skorvo. I researched her Instagram like crazy, looking at her work, her photos, checked her website, and I felt like she would understand the assignment. And babyyyyy, she did not disappoint.
Once I knew I wanted Marta Skorvo to be my photographer, I emailed her about rates and prices. At the time however, I was still deciding whether or not to do a photo shoot based on my financial planning and how long it would take me to get all the Ivy Park pieces I wanted. Mind you, this is mid-February I'm catching on to the Ivy Park trend. I projected that I would done buying everything by the end of August, so we ended up scheduling the photo shoot on September 3rd and 4th. Once the dates were solidified, I sent Marta my vision board for how I wanted the shoot to be executed.
My vision board was really fun to make because I kept thinking, “Wow, I'm doing this!” I'm no longer in front of my phone screen like, “Oh! I wish I could do that.” I was actually doing this. I already knew I wanted to be in Manhattan for my pictures, but I just had to narrow down where. I planned for the shoot to go from the World Trade Center all the way to 96 Street on the Q line. For the locations, I was going based off places I visited and took note how aesthetically pleasing they looked.
After I picked the places, I had 24 outfits to choose from, but choosing was difficult because I had four collections to sift through. I had to pinpoint which outfits I truly wanted to photograph during this shoot. In the vision, I broke everything up by collection (putting my favorite collections first), then broke it down again into the colorways (putting my favorite colorways first), then I counted how many outfits I wanted to use during the photo shoot and added them up to 24.
I had everything in my vision board described and written out. I let Marta know how my hair and nails would look, the poses I wanted to try (I watched a lot of model pose tutorials on TikTok), how I wanted certain shots to be, how I would be posting my content, any equipment I would be bringing, the whole nine yards. My vision board was planned to a T because I wanted to make sure nothing about my shoot would go wrong. This was my first photo shoot and I was determined to see it through.
Fast forward to mid-August, I booked my hair, nails, and make up appointments for the week of my photo shoot. I had to make sure I was on it with booking because I was going to extremely popular stylists. By luck, I got all the dates and times that I wanted and I was set for the week of my photo shoot.
Two days before the photo shoot, Marta and I zoom-called to prep and rearrange the days because of the weather. She also let me know how she would contribute to my shoot in terms of poses and creative direction, which was extremely helpful on the day of the shoot—especially because my long nails limited my ability to put on certain pieces. However, the show went on and everything went according to plan on the day of the shoot!
Marta was supportive with everything I wanted and was just an amazing person all around. Our ideas bounced off each other effortlessly and we were in-sync the entire day. What stood out to me most about Marta was that she allowed me to be myself while encouraging me to step outside my comfort zone. She was the best pick for my first photo shoot and I sincerely commend her for doing an eight hour photo session with me.
Outside of the actual photoshoot, I took time to plan out my Ivy Park social media strategy by taking the different tips and advice I learned from other creators on TikTok to increase my reach and engagement. I gained a lot of followers and traction from the Ivy Park community alone on my Instagram by using the Ivy Park hashtags. I enjoyed that I found others who were just as interested in Ivy Park as I was and bonded over it. The overall feedback on my project when I rolled out everything on social media was fabulous! The project itself was well-received by the audience and made me realize that I want to continue content creating.
Although I did this project for fun, I want to go bigger. This project taught me that I love content creating about fashion, my adventures, and anything else I can think of. Doing this project pushed me to put myself out there more on social media and to start utilizing my major (Public Relations) to the fullest extent. I'm at my happy place whenever I'm digitally creating and I have a lot to offer as a content creator—or really whatever path I choose to take regarding social media.
Overall, I wrote this article to give insight on how I turned a project I did for fun into a career I want to take seriously. So look out for your future content creator on anything and everything! And definitely, check me out on my website if I'm someone you want to collaborate with. I'm always down for the new adventures.
A little bit about the writer, Natasha Winston Clarke
Hello! My name is Natasha Winston Clarke and I'm a content creator from New York City! I like to vlog about my experiences surrounding fashion, adventure, and lifestyle. I recently decided to start writing blogs again to brush up on my writing skills and to find a new way of sharing my content. Writing is a secret hobby of mine because I love telling a good story with great visuals. Thus, I do hope you enjoy reading my stories as much as I enjoy writing them. If you want to leave feedback or check out what else I do, check out my website for more info!
Credits:
All professional photos credited to Marta Skovro