American Summer: The 2019 Swim Edit

If you’re a long-time reader of Keep Calm and Chiffon, you know that I’ve been pretty open about my journey of getting laid off from magazines and falling into the freelance life. As a freelancer I get to tap into lots of my skills from back in the day working at print magazines and in many ways I still apply my editorial decision=making to campaigns I work on today for brands. I conceptualize a shoot, create a mood board, picture which outfits will be shot with which backdrops, and actually go out and shoot it. Usually this process gets applied to one-off projects or campaigns, and this time I wanted to create a more continuous story.

So Jessie ventured with me to Coney Island last week to shoot this lookbook that I’ve decided to call American Summer. This is an edit of four of the swimsuits that I have been obsessed with for summer 2019 and I am in love with how it turned out. I tried to incorporate my print editor sensibilities and stick to three images for each outfit, as though I only had three pages to work with, to make sure that I was really choosing the strongest images that I felt could tell the story best. I hope you all enjoy this, and be sure to check out my Instagram to see an exclusive video of these outfits in action. If you’re inspired by this and want to see my lookbook of spring/summer outfits inspired by Gossip Girl characters, be sure to check out this YouTube video.