4 models, 2 stylists, 1 photographer, and a wagon full of bespoke millinery hike to the peak of a mountain in Idaho…I’m still looking for the punchline.
As a creative professional, it is rare that the opportunity arises to create editorial work in a stimulating setting, with freedom from brand guidelines and a group of collaborators with whom you can share genuine laughs. In collaborating with Marmalade, one quickly learns that constant chaos is an inherent—and occasionally charming—condition of running a family fashion business.
To set the scene: Kit Widmyer is a day out from hosting Coeur d’Alene Fashion Week. The annual fashion show requires months of work and skilled corralling of North Idaho’s scrappy creative community to pull off successfully, so squeezing in a photoshoot is no small task. A natural connector of people, Kit’s entourage of models, makeup artists, photographers, and hype girls are swirling around her in a great coordination of lunches, car rides, Instagram captions, and racks of clothes to be approved for tomorrow’s show. Kasey is fitting Joi—who flew in from Dallas—in a cherry red floor-length skirt and matching bikini top. Kit barks orders into a voice memo as she thumbs through a rack looking for a top to complete her second look. Cait, from Spokane, Washington, is prancing around in a trench coat half-buttoned over barely-there bottoms and topped with a Binata hat of dancing plumes—the look is perfect.
I flew in from Savannah the night before with my camera bag and my largest suitcase stuffed with outfit options for the photoshoot and upcoming fashion show, honored to have been adopted into the fold for the weekend. Kasey Widmyer, Kit’s twin sister and Fashion Director of Marmalade, met up with me in the Atlanta airport, where we boarded our connecting flight to Spokane, hand-carrying bags of delicate feather fascinators from Binata Millinery. With the NYC-based milliner celebrating at least half a dozen recent Met Gala red carpet appearances, we were thrilled to be trusted with toting these wearable works of art to the opposite side of the country.
With the fashion show deadline approaching and much to be done, we were fighting daylight hours to reach the top of Mineral Ridge before sunset. We departed downtown Coeur d’Alene at 5:30, driving a stretch of highway bent around a glittering lake with mountains jutting up around it. We reached the trail approach with two hours until sunset, anticipating an hour’s hike up, an hour to shoot, and a steep descent in the dark. Dressed in activewear otherwise, each model donned an elaborate headpiece as we began our hike to protect the delicate structures from damage. As we traded turns pulling the wagon full of clothes, shoes, and camera gear up the steep, rocky trail, we couldn’t help but laugh at ourselves, comparing the absurdity of the scene to a challenge from an early season of America’s Next Top Model.
After an hour of sweat and heavy breathing, the girls shrieked in relief as we reached the top and golden hour cast rays of light through the trees. Before I could pause to consider the framing of our first shots, sports bras and hiking boots were flying as the models changed into their looks. Working with the fading light, I crouched in bushes and balanced on ledges with some precarity to capture it, feeling more like a National Geographic photographer than a fashion photographer. The girls worked in playful synchronicity, posing each other, rolling around in the grass, and climbing on fallen tree limbs. As we reached the end of the trail, we discovered a vista overlooking a river winding between mountaintops cast in orange by a neon sunset. By this point, we had collected a crowd of onlookers who had hiked Mineral Ridge to catch their own sunset, not anticipating a herd of models posing on the Idaho trails, but fascinated by the chaos of our race with the light.
On a bench overlooking the vista, our various accoutrements littered over the dusty ground, I posed Kit and Joi for a final image. Balanced on a steep rocky slope with my camera made heavier by my speedlight, Kasey spotted me from behind as I snapped my favorite shot—our mess illuminated in a haze as the girls looked on, chic and exhausted.
