Stemming from a collaboration that began at the 2018 Photo Vogue Festival, Vogue Italia, Gucci Beauty and Jimmy Moffat’s Red Hook Labs selected Australian photographer
Chase C. Middleton to present her own unconventional take on the Gucci Bloom family of fragrances including the newly-launched Gocce di Fiori.
Scenes of everyday life amongst a group of young women are accompanied by fragrances from the Gucci Bloom line, existing together in an intimate space in which time seems to be suspended. The film-like frames lie somewhere between fiction and reality, sprinkled with clues that encourage viewers to fill in the blanks with their imaginations.
What was the story you were trying to tell?
I was thinking a lot about sisterhood and friendship. Growing up, my friends and I would build worlds within our bedrooms and take on personas to suit the clothes we wore. In a way the shoot allowed us all to relive our youth.
How would you describe your photographic style and how do these images fit into that narrative?
My work composes a disparate range of subjects: ritualistic gatherings, encounters with strangers, hallucinatory artifice and the heightened drama of myth in the domestic uncanny. I feel like these images exist in a more innocent and nostalgic place then my work often lives… almost like watching a John Hughes movie.
In one shot, perfumes float in the air. Why did you decide to integrate an element of magic?
I think there is something kind of magical about women united together. A group of women (even a pair) together are unstoppable.
What role do scents and smells play in everyday life?
Scents have always played a big part in my life whether it’s the smell of my mother’s hair when I wrap my arms around her or walking past a flowering jasminum polyanthum plant in Spring. Putting on a fragrance in the morning is a gift of luxury to oneself. I never feel complete leaving the house without perfume.
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