S w e d i s h S w i m S h o o t
As we are prepping madly at Peach Trail HQ for the Dessous London show, our Swedish swim wear shoot seems a million years ago. Looking through the images and picking our favorites, bring back some amazing memories of the weekend and the reminder of how lucky we are to live somewhere where mosquitos don't bite your face when you are asleep. For the shoot the PT team and our amazing photographer Esme Mai headed to the beautiful lakes of the Värmland County in Sweden. A location where no photo will do it justice. Basically heaven with a side order of mosquitos and giant ants with shark like teeth.
Anyway, as a team of 4 made up of friendships that have lasted many line ups of the Sugababes, we flew to Oslo, debated how to work an automatic car, and drove the couple of hours to Sweden (via a supermarket where we discovered the only thing cheap in Sweden is vogue cigarettes- hurrah) to Annicas lake house. Annica is an old friend of the PT team and a force to be reckoned with. I honestly think if it wasn't for her we would all still be stuck on a lake trying to figure out how to row a boat. After a relaxing evening of amazing food and being coxed into the freezing cold lake for what I think was a baptism to scare away all our city spirits and become one with Sweden, we settled down in our little out house with a toilet that was hollow and a front door that didn't even lock (apparently not needed in the Swedish outback) On the day of the shoot our model Donna turns up looking all early twenties and like she too has just dropped from heaven, and we set her the first challenge, of walking through the forest in the rain and mud with us over eager 30 odd year olds wittering on about the latest horrendous date we had been on, or why the hell our mothers won't just shut up.
Don't worry, she survived challenge one.
Challenge two was model our fun new swimwear, designed to tease, in a shared fisherman hut whilst said fisherman kindly showed us the days catch. Guts a kimbo and all. (vom). And challenge three, was getting brave Donna to do a change of bikini pants in a wet rowing boat in the middle of a lake with an audience. This girl is invincible! She is scared of nothing! Believe me, we threw everything at her. Except insect repellent.
Then after walking through more forest in the rain, we settled in for the night in our perfect little summer house and laughed our heads of at all the photos that we ourselves featured in, whilst Donna filled us in in her studies and work.
This girl has brains and beauty.
And even though a small part of me was jealous of her youth and confidence, it also made me so grateful that MY 20's are over. And never to be revisited. Lock that shit away please.
Day 2 featured some more lake side shooting, enough to get a bit of a name for ourselves in the local region. We don't like to leave anywhere without being gossiped about. And then we took the leap and actually dressed ourselves, brushed our hair, and went for coffee and cake in the local town of Arvika. I don't know if any of you have ever had Prinsesstårta cake but I recommend it. Don't be put off by the unnatural lime green colour of the icing, it's actually the best thing that will ever pass your lips.
After we dropped of Donna at a train station with no idea if trains even stopped, we headed back to our little home to drink and eat ourselves silly, dressed up in a variety of fur hats we found in places that were not meant to be found, discussing our real lives which seemed so far away.
As well as providing the most beautiful back drop for Peach Trail’s first Swim Collection, these short but sweet 3 days in Sweden reminded me that, of all the adventures we have been on and are still yet to come, I'm so glad to be doing it with my Sugababes line up.
