Chiara 21st anniversary shoot: Today I want to talk about a model who I worked with for over two decades and who had a very profound effect on my photography.
Chiara and I did our first shoot way back on 2001-06-09. She had moved from Milan to Southampton in the days before Brexit deprived us of our right to freedom of movement. We met through a mutual friend. After which, we enjoyed well over 100 more shoots together, during the decade or so that followed…
I soon discovered that Chiara is a big Bettie Page fan. She has a very similar hourglass figure to Ms Page, and enjoys modelling the same figure-shaping vintage-style ‘push-you-up, pull-you-in’ corsetry that I like shooting. She also performed various exercise routines she said ‘help keep my figure’ that she lifted from Italian fashion magazines. These proved surprisingly photogenic too.
After a while, Chiara became my researcher, spending most of her working day scanning documents and clinical slides for various customers. Her written English and numeracy proved significantly better than most of the Brits I’d hired. So she turned-out to be a competent proof-reader. And her easy-going Italian charm was an absolute godsend when it came to dealing with customers.
However, her real passion was modelling. So when we finished for the day or business was a bit slack, or perhaps we just felt we needed a break, we frequently scuttled-off to my little attic studio for a shoot. While I setup the lights, put fresh batteries in the camera etc, Chiara raided the costumes boxes and slipped into something less comfortable. 🙂
Chiara’s kind and gentle manner developed into a remarkable talent for getting the best out of new models. In fact, she introduced me to many of her friends, who subsequently became regular models too.
If it was a warm day, Chiara would grab a few outfits from the costumes boxes and we would go ‘somewhere nice’ instead. On this particular day, it was around 27°C in Southampton. So we drove to the Tanners Lane beach in the New Forest, about 10km west of Beaulieu. It’s one of the few places on this part of the planet where one can still drive right on to the beach – though it is advisable to study the local tide timetable before doing so!
We tried all sorts of different styles on Chiara over the years. But her “T-shirt and girdle” look proved to be one of most enduring. It is powerfully feminine and flattering and suits figure her perfectly. And it’s a look we continue to shoot here on waist.it for lots of different models. It’s a look that’s both athletic and shapely. And speaking as a photographer, I love to capture it as often as I can.
Of course, I always enjoyed photographing Chiara’s classic hourglass Italian body especially when tightly encased in various grades of shapewear. She had the perfect figure for it – still has, in fact. I hate to sound like one of those photographers who tortures his models just to get that perfect shot. But the fact is that tighter the squeeze, the better she looks! Same with most models actually 🙂
Fortunately for me, it seems corsetry has come back into fashion again, especially with the advent of cheap waist training corsets from China. A lot of my recent models have quiet good shapewear and corset collections of their own. Consequently, having experimented this stuff it on Chiara for many years I can honestly say that her influence is with me today in every model shoot I do today.
Even after all this time, and despite the fact I no longer live in Southampton, Chiara occasionally makes the 70km round trip to my new studio here in Havant. In fact the following images are from our 21st anniversary shoot 2022-06-04. And if you scroll down the page a little, then you’ll observe that here in 2022, Chiara can still squeeze into the tight maroon girdle I gave her back in 2005…
(Monochrome images are on gallery page 2.)
Chiara, siempre hermosa
Thank you. Yes, she is indeed, always beautiful.