In the weeks before starting to build this issue, we had all been reading up on Steampunk. There is abundant description of it - too much, in fact. All we wanted for the cover shoot was imagery. That narrowed it down. Steampunk looks like 1800’s society gone gadget wild. Call it Techno-Victorian. We took that and gave it roots in the newly thawed ground of a 21st century Midwestern Spring. There’s nothing like rapport to set the tone for a great work day. The model, the hair and makeup assistant, and the backstage photographer were friends in school, and all three Reverie Fair Magazine executives came out. Take six creative women, their combined makeup and beauty tools, a trunk full of vintage clothes, a box of brass, bronze and copper findings, and a trove of vintage collectibles. Pour all that over the crackling potential of a subject like Steampunk Spring, and stand back. Our model was Emma Novitzki, a stunning beauty with Spring-fresh skin and the spirit of a Victorian suffragette. We picked her up in a car filled with lace, corsets and mechanical baubles. The girls chugged Starbucks energy drinks from a cooler in the back seat as we drove to Carly’s house in the woods. The setting was on Carly’s back acre, a sunny clearing dotted with the first tender shoots and mosses of the season. We launched an expedition down the steps into her basement, the dark land of a thousand props, and returned with our arms loaded; oil cans, lamps, camera, telescope, a bird cage, and the perfect clock. We were originally going for a cover image that invoked The Tin Man bound up in vines and flowers, a flower pot for a hat with steam coming out the top. It was a great starting point, and we were not bothered at all that what we ended up with was nothing like that. It was Victorian with a sense of wonder, which to us was the feminine creative power of Steampunk.
FOLLOW US
In the weeks before starting to build this issue, we had all been reading up on Steampunk. There is abundant description of it - too much, in fact. All we wanted for the cover shoot was imagery. That narrowed it down. Steampunk looks like 1800s society gone gadget wild. Call it Techno-Victorian. We took that and gave it roots in the newly thawed ground of a 21st century Midwestern Spring.
There’s nothing like rapport to set the tone for a great work day. The model, the hair and makeup assistant, and the backstage photographer were friends in school, and all three Reverie Fair Magazine executives came out. Take six
creative women, their combined makeup and beauty tools, a trunk full of vintage clothes, a box of brass, bronze and copper findings, and a trove of
vintage collectibles. Pour all that over the crackling potential of a subject like Steampunk Spring, and stand back. Our model was Emma Novitzki, a stunning beauty with Spring-fresh skin and the spirit of a Victorian suffragette. We picked her up in a car filled with lace, corsets and mechanical baubles. The girls chugged Starbucks energy drinks from a cooler in the back seat as we drove to Carly’s house in the woods. The setting was on Carly’s back acre, a sunny clearing dotted with the first tender shoots and mosses of the season. We launched an expedition down the steps into her basement, the dark land of a thousand props, and