Why we choose to use mannequins instead of real life models for our garment photography 🤷‍♀️📷

Today's topic comes from one of our customers, Ali B (thank you, Ali 😀). Now, let me start by saying, that in an ideal world I would love to use real life models showcasing our garments in our listing photos. I can just imagine small and plus size women, wearing our singlets/shorts and sleeveless dress on a beautiful beach, wind blowing in their hair! 🏖️🌞

I'll start by explaining the difference in processes between the usual fashion brand (fast fashion) and brands like ours (slow fashion).

In a usual fashion brand, new collections are designed every 3 months and these collections are designed 18 months ahead of the season they are planned for. A fact which actually hurts my head to think about!😆

These collections obviously have to be designed, manufactured etc but I'm going to concentrate on the photography side of it today.

As each collections are completed, the photo shoots take place. As I trained in Fashion Technology, I have been involved in my share of fashion shoots and they are far from glamorous 😉They are incredibly expensive, very hectic days with a multitude of people running around ironing garments, applying hair and makeup💄, photography etc.

So onto brands like Lahay that are classed as "slow fashion"... Generally, slow fashion concentrates on several key qualities in their businesses

• treating their staff well, with good pay and working conditions 
• manufacturing quality garments that last many seasons, reducing the amount of times the consumer needs to replace these garments
• reducing waste in their day to day operations
• usually produce smaller ranges or collections

Slow fashion brands can still bring out collections but they tend to be twice a year, not 4 times.

In our business, we tend to not concentrate on bringing out collections, as we prefer to manufacture wardrobe basics that do not need to be continually updated or upgraded. Because of this fact, our new styles are dripped into our existing range.

For example, recently we have introduced 2 styles of shorts, all the variations of tunics, our fleecy sweatshirts, all of our value bundles and E-gift cards. Using the fast fashion formula, we would have to wait to have enough styles ready to do a photo shoot with photographer and 2 models (typical size 8 plus our preferred plus size model), hair and makeup etc.

Instead, we prefer to add these new styles to our website, as soon as they are ready. Literally the week the design has completed all the RLT (real life testing), it can be available for sale on our website. We can achieve this quickly by using our 2 mannequins in our studio. Maisy (our size 8 mannequin) and Daisy (our size 16 mannequin) are very patient girls and there's not a moment of sass or diva behaviour from them! 🤣

On the subject of photos, we have had a couple of customers recently ask if we could add more photos of the different colours available in our garments. We are slowly working on these and adding them to our listing pages. We currently have 66 different styles, with most available in 19 colours 🟠🟤🔴As it's very important to us to show our garments in small and plus sizes, this then doubles the quantity of photos needed.

For those of you playing along at home, we would need approximately 2,508 photos to have a pic of every style, in every colour and the 2 sizes 😅It's going to take a while😁In the meantime, there are colour swatches below the size options of each listing and we have intentionally named all of our colours with clear or descriptive names. For example, hot pink looks like hot pink 🩷, royal blue looks like royal blue used in school uniforms🔵 and black is named black◼️, not "midnight"!

I hope this was helpful and gave you another sneak behind the scenes of Lahay!

Jocelyn