Trap Door Fun
With Julie and Marzi
In 2013, in the middle of the Junction area of Toronto, there used to be a cool little clothing store called The Trap Door Boutique.
The clothing was not your department-store schlock. It was vibrant, unusual, daring and wickedly tempting. At the back of the store, standing behind the counter was store owner, Gabrielle Neveu.
In the photo Gabrielle is wearing several of the store’s wares, against a backdrop of a necklace display.
What made this store particularly interesting to us was that The Trap Door specialized in stock Canadian designed and made clothing.
There were beautiful tops, skirts, dresses jackets and wraps,
And gorgeous hand made jewellery, scarves, funky tights and socks,wicked underpants and tees, and shoes and boots. There was also a limited line of mens clothing (shirts and tees and magnificent ties).
Gabrielle showed us some of her artwork, which made us think of a Tim Burton movie.
Her work was delicate and ethereal and other-Worldy.
We loved the store and the funkiness of the clothing and accessories and the interesting owner and in one of those moments of thinking up a totally wacky idea, we wondered if we could do a short video in the store?
Luckily for us, Gabi was agreeable, and we began to plan for this.
My then garden helper, Marzi, liked the idea and said she would be willing to model some of the outfits. Our artistic neighbour Julie, was also willing to be involved and we had the ingredients needed for this project. The end result took many hours of fighting tooth and nail with video editing software with a lot of bad language from me.
We did have a lot of fun.
We did not have a video camera, I was planning on using my Canon point and shoot which had some video abilities built in. Bruce would of course take care of the lighting and the still photography. One small issue was that I had no experience in making videos, a small obstacle, I figured naively.
The day of the shoot dawned. We loaded the car with lighting equipment, picked up Marzi and drove to the Trap door.
Gabi had picked a day which was normally quiet for the store, and had opened an hour earlier so we could get set up.
Marzi had done an amazing job with funky, goth style makeup. I fixed her hair in a spiky style. Gabi showed us some outfits to get started, and Marzi got changed.
Some customers showed up and were surprised by the unusual activity in the store. Julie arrived and was given some outfits to try on.
Link to The actual video
Credits
- Photographer and Lighting: Bruce M Walker
- Models: Marzi and Julie
- Makeup: Marzi and Julie
- Hair: Louise Peacock
- Wardrobe Manager: Gabrielle Neveau
- Location: The Trap Door, Toronto, Ontario (Sadly, this store is closed.)
- Videographer: Louise Peacock
