Clara Benador
In the Fall of 2021, I was invited to Paris Fashion Week by the buying director of Dover Street Market London. She wanted to meet me and see the collection. It was a major milestone for Saint Sintra and still resonates with our clients.
While there, Hedi Stanton and I put together a photoshoot with Clara Benador, a model and author I'd long admired. She had recently published her book, Les Petites Amoureuses with Éditions Gallimard, following her grandmother's experience as an expatriated French-Jewish refugee, fleeing persecution in the haven city Casablanca. Benador herself is of Moroccan descent and during our shoot we spoke at length about the impact of her multiculturalism on the novel.
Hedi, Clara and I went to Chez Jeanette, a popular bistrot in the Saint Denis area where Tunisian and Indian grocers share foot traffic with neighboring cafés catering to the young, hip, bobo crowd.
We sat and chatted for a bit over coffee and fries before we got to shooting.
We started in the back of the café where we hoped nobody would notice. Needing no instruction, Clara adopted the doll-like persona immediately, staring idly into the distance.
This perfect, blasé stare whispers behind your back, "I'm too cool for you."
The interior of Chez Jeannette is papered with dancing Toulouse-Lautrec illustrations and those quintessentially Parisian woven plastic chairs. Patrons come from all over the city to sit outside this resto and chat about politics, culture, fashion and each other. I came here once with my good friend Alexander Picon and got food poisoning from the steak tartare. Buyers beware.
After about 15 minutes, the purveyor of the restaurant came over and told us that we needed to stop shooting. He said that brands pay thousands of dollars to rent the venue for events and photoshoots, and that we were no exception. I apologized profusely and asked if we could have a few more minutes, to which he turned a blind eye.
We had planned to get photos of Clara mingling at the bar, drinking an apératif in Saint Sintra couture so we were scrambling to find our next shooting location. With a 40 pound bag on my shoulder with nearly the entire collection inside, we set off for the Canal Saint Martin.
My name is is a close cognate for Central Saint Martins, with the word saint added in; it's also almost a palindrome, Sintra Martins.
On our way to the canals, we had a quick change into look number two: a pastel hue purple dégradé embroidered halter top and mini skirt. Clara pulled out her cowboy boots and a cigarette.
She writes in her novel about war. Literally in the context of occupied France, and metaphorically. Above, Clara is a fighter and her cigarette a pistol.
I love how the wall is cracking below her, as if impugned by her weightlessness.
Later, we walked towards the canals. Clara changed into her third and final look of the day which was the classic Saint Sintra look we and so many love so much. On top, she wore the hot magenta mesh hoodie bedazzled with star shaped crystal appliqués and matching tank beneath; on bottom she wore the obnoxious rainbow hued and tremendous feather floor length skirt.
In hindsight, writing about this photoshoot four years after the fact, I can't say with confidence by whom or where I intended this to be worn. It stands outside of the 'appropriate' - it's an outfit for the soul. Years after the cocoon of fashion school, my autotelic desire to design has disappeared in a way I was warned about, and for which I didn't prepare, replaced by risk calculations and market research reports. This is the tiny war I'm fighting.
Clara lying on the banks of the Canal.
This is one of my favorite places in the world, especially during the summer. Students, young people and old pack themselves alongside the water with guitars and wine at all hours of the day and into the night to talk with each other and enjoy the sun.
At this point we were all quite tired and Hedi was running out of film. I tried to retrieve the footage of this day from my iCloud but the quality had degraded severely. These images, however, live to see another post.
Photos by Hedi Stanton
Modeled by Clara Benador
Styled by Sintra Martins