Armed with this season’s hottest fashion, and a VW Tiguan, SLEEK set off on a magical road trip across Iceland – read our Fashion Director’s diary of the trip below
In the nineties, Björk bewitched the world with her ethereal melodies and Damon Albarn – inspired by a “reoccurring dream of flying over black beaches”– relocated to Reykjavik. It seemed back then, that there was no cooler place in the world than Iceland.
Cut to 20 years later, the Scandinavian island is back in the news, fighting its way out of a catastrophic financial crash by beating England in the World Cup, and playing host to the A-list on their holidays, including Kanye West, Beyoncé and Jay Z.
Enchanted by the visual feasts of extreme nature and 24-hour light, SLEEK decamped their fashion team to Iceland to shoot our womenswear editorial The Witching Hour for issue 51. With a global team and a Volkswagen Tiguan – a favourite of Icelandic drivers for its ability to adapt from city-to-country and master inclement weather, and challenging road conditions.
Read Below for our Fashion Director’s diary of the magical road trip:
Day 1
We are staying at the ODDSSON hostel , which wraps around the Faxaflói bay area. The large windows frame the melancholic seascape as we wait for the team to arrive. Our call time is 11am, photo shoots usually start at 6am, our stylist Tess Yopp is panicking, but as Saga Sig, our Icelandic photographer reassures us, we will not run out of daylight in Iceland in the summer months, it will be bright well into the night.
Right now the sky is eerie and oyster-coloured, time feels like it has been flipped upside down. We eat sourdough bread as black as the Icelandic beaches for breakfast, as our makeup artist Tinna Empera, works on our model Yulia Musieichuk. Tinna tells the team about the magical properties that Icelandic wild-harvested ingredients have on the skin and recommends us native beauty products including a brand called Soley to stock up on whilst we are there.
Tess goes through the looks with Saga, and they match up the colours of the clothes with pictures of the locations we will visit and shoot over the next few days. A bright lilac faux-astrakhan cropped trouser suit by KENZO is paired with the red rocks of The Rauðhólar, and Saga suggests shooting Céline’s oversized pebble earrings on one of the black beaches.
Day 2
After a late finish and an even later dinner ( it is hard to switch off in the 24-hour light and we had barely slept) Gerður our fashion assistant plugs her phone directly into the Tiguan’s Car-Net App Connect service and blasts some Alvia Islandia (an Icelandic rapper) to wake us up – the twinkly lyrics suits the ethereal landscapes flashing past the window.
On day one, we had captured mountains, geysers and beaches, but today we are chasing waterfalls. The Tiguan takes us on the two-hour drive from Reykjavík to the Svartifoss Waterfall, in the Skaftafell national park. Tess pairs a sharp Jil Sander suit with flashes of silver thread with the crashing water.
The terrain is completely flat, and there is a distinct lake of trees. Gerður tells me about how the government plunged money into tourism after the financial crisis. She says: “In the last few years, the country has seen a huge increase in visitors. It is the perfect place to drive, lots of cross country roads and national parks to visit. We think Instagram has had a part to play in making increasing Iceland’s visitors”. This is easy to see. Every view from the Tiguan is picture perfect, you can understand how this previously untapped part of the world would suddenly get exposure through Instagram.
We park near a geyser bubbling on the edge of a small ski lodge, the kind of location that only an Icelandic native would know about. Tinna touches up Yulia’s makeup in the back of the Tiguan – the giant trunk is perfect as a makeshift dressing room!
The light has changed again, it’s 6pm, and the brightest it has been all day. The team decamp to the geyser, and Tess dresses Yulia in a full Marc Jacobs look: a witchy oversized knit and long black skirt. The air smells sulphurous and Yulia throws her body around in the hot steam escaping from the earth. Saga snaps away. It’s a cliche, but you feel very connected to the planet when you see it bubbling and seething beneath your feet.
Photographer Saga Sig
Day 3
We have clocked up hours in the car, but you would barely notice with the smooth drive in the Tiguan and the enchanting scenery. After 20 locations, and 20 different looks we are finally on the last one. Usually, on shoots everyone feels relieved, however today the team is quiet. It has been a beautiful experience. We pull over in the Tiguan and shoot Yulia running through yellow fields in a yellow Marques’ Almeida sweater. We lie on the soft ground and watch the clouds. As it’s the last night, we go to the Blue Lagoon and swim in the hot springs. Daubed with seaweed masks we pose for pictures in the milky water as hot as a bath while trying not to think about the end of our spellbinding trip.
Stylist Tess Yopp