Halloween Editorial: Beetlejuice Meets Marie Antoinette
If you know me at all then you know my love for Halloween runs DEEP. Like as deep as as the ghost tattoo on my ribs deep. I grew up with super fond memories of dressing up, decorating the house in all things spooky, and trick or treating in quite the festive and communal neighborhood. You know that part in Hocus Pocus whenever Max and Danny walk the pumpkin lined driveway up to the spooktacular mansion with wonderful disbelief? That was me as a kid. Even though the houses in my neighborhood were far from mansions, I couldn’t tell the difference. I loved every deathly, gory, enchanting part of this holiday., and still do at 30, and will ‘til i’m 130.
Now that you have some backstory, I wanna tell you all about how this recent editorial came to be! Picture this: Beetlejuice and Marie Antoinette have a baby and this is the masterpiece they birthed. That’s what I wanted to create for this editorial! Something elegant, but dingy. Something beautiful, yet off-putting.
“Beetlejuice and Marie Antoinette have a baby and this is the masterpiece they birthed.”
I began creating like I do with all of my sessions: a mood board. Per usual, I was drawn toward pale tones and painterly imagery.I noticed myself saving scenes from the movie Marie Antoinette so I ran with it! Now something Halloween driven to tie in the spooky element of the shoot. Tim Burton is the king of Halloween and has always been such an inspiration to me. I could have drawn his movies from a hat and not have chosen a bad egg so that’s exactly what I did! I threw in 6 of my favorite TB movies in a hat and drew one of my all-time faves, Beetlejuice. The rest is history, fam. I steadily put a wardrobe together capturing both the delicacy of Marie’s finesse and the iconic black and white stripes of Beetlejuice and voila! My friend and fellow artist, Meagan, did a phenomenal job with hair and makeup that really set this look OFF. I couldn’t be happier with the final product.
A big ol’ shoutout to The Ostreum for having us and to our fabulous model, Destynie, for being willing to put even a plastic roach in her mouth! Ugh, even fake, they’re disgusting. PS: Destynie is such a talented photographer and you should check out her beautiful work here!
Stay spooky, friends!
