It rained for seven days in a row.
And then it rained again for three more days. But for one brief day in that sopping stretch of 11 days in New York City... the sun came out. Spring had sprung a huge leak but one beautiful day on the cobble-stoned streets of Soho 20/20 got a chance to re-energize the iWear assault with this issue’s featured photo shoot.
Art director Iris Johnson rented a big black dresser-van to drive us three long blocks to the crossroads of Broome and Greene sidestepping the destructive rash of new why-scraper construction threatening to transform Soho to Ho-hum.
Senior editor Gloria Nicola guarded the manila envelops scrawled with the names of the 10 frames set to star in our photo shoot. Associate editor Melissa Arkin wasn’t just along for the ride. By virtue of age and imagination Melissa is key to defining iWear as glasses deemed youthful and stylish by virtue of some innate exuberance. You don’t necessarily have to be young to wear the eyewear featured... but you can’t be “old.”
Photographer Stephen Sullivan works at a near maniacal pace; always making the models and the eyewear glow. This man will literally jump up into a sloppy garbage dumpster to give you the perfect view of a fashion portrait. We always work with what we call a shoot book that contains instant snapshots of each photo set up. Steve is a dervish on that delivery. We seem to have impeccable records of his digital wonders seconds after each scenario ends.
And on this particular day everything clicked perfectly. This was one of the best photo shoots I ever witnessed. And it comes just in the nick of time... for us... and you. We all seem to need a boost of oomph these days. The current crop of new eyewear and especially cutting-edge iWear flings a huge dollop of style and stature into the opti-arena. We all need to scoop up the dose and face folks of all ages with eyewear that can see a brighter world. The “i” for me in iWear on this shoot was the “I” that says let’s see how we can make this biz wake up, eyes wide open.
