sagolikt

i was scrolling through my archive.

1,192 diamonds. twenty years of styling.

i wasn’t looking for anything.

i got through two pages.

six images stopped me.

i don’t know why these six.

they are not the most beautiful.

they are the ones

my eye did not want to leave.

here they are.

i don’t remember all of them.

that is part of the truth too.

astrid was swedish, like me.

the photographer was married to a friend of mine

who worked at purple pr in london

and who lent me clothes i had wanted for months.

we shot them onto astrid

and then walked to the local pub

in east london

and drank until it was the middle of the night.

i can find his name in facebook.

i don’t remember the day at all.

what i remember is that anki found me.

she was best friends with camilla norrback,

whose fashion show i had styled.

we were meant to shoot in the garden.

it started to rain.

we moved inside — my tiny cellar flat, my bed,

ellen’s old camera —

and in my head it was a disaster.

ellen took it so easily.

i thought i was watching a shoot fall apart.

i was watching her make magic

in a room i had not thought

could hold magic.

the image is proof.

it is sheer beauty.

we were in the most sagolika place

i had ever been to in east london.

i had borrowed valentino —

a dress by a master —

and i had adored marcelina

before we met.

the day did not go

as i had imagined.

sometimes the magic does not come through

the person you thought would carry it.

it comes through the room.

it comes through the dress.

it comes through gemma’s lens.

the image is proof

of the magic that arrived anyway.

lucy bridge was the makeup artist.

tim walker had just cast her as a model

for i-D magazine.

he had found her on a london bus.

she was thee one.

julia was saga sig’s muse.

i met her before the shoot

at her way-out-west london flat

and we sourced vintage pieces

from her own wardrobe.

we shot in hyde park

without permission,

pretending to be students.

it was for a french publication.

dealer de luxe.

what lands is our friendship.

our inspirational friendship.

after we got to know each other —

she worked at elite stockholm

and gifted me models for shoots —

we had endless meetings.

i thought our friendship would never end.

we promised each other so many things.

our shoots are sacred.

we were sacred.

we lost it.

(end of Martina paragraph — “we lost it.”)

(Enter, Enter — space)

sagolikt är ordet jag använder

när jag inte kan förklara.

sagolikt is the word i use

when i cannot explain.

this was the first two pages.

there are thirty-six more.

🌷