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Guest Blogger: Cleo’s Cat Williams

Shooting delicious fashion in exotic surroundings is certainly something to write home about. Fresh off the plane from Rio, Cleo Magazine’s Cat Williams takes us behind the scenes at Cleo’s annual swimsuit shoot…

Touching down in Rio was a much awaited and very welcome event. It takes weeks to plan for such intensive work travel and it was an extremely long flight, so there were certainly some sighs of relief when we finally arrived.

The weeks before involved numerous meetings, showroom appointments, look book call ins and of course some serious super styling. Cleo travels every year to the most exotic locations to shoot our November swim issue and this year I was on the team headed to Brazil.

It took six suitcases, one of which was flown in from New York containing the most desirable pieces of jewellery that the Big Apple has to offer, and the others full of Australia’s most desirable swim wear and fashion pieces. Having arrived at night we only had a brief glance at the city by streetlight we were all very excited!

First things first, I had to figure out where to put all of our stuff so that we could continue to style and work out the stories as we went along. We were shooting every one of the ten days we were there so I needed to set up our hotel rooms just like the fashion cupboard at Cleo.

This took a while but turned out really well considering that our amazing hotel rooms had the wardrobe of every girl’s dreams. This meant plenty of hanging space, shelves, drawers and shoe racks. Score! There is nothing worse than styling straight out of a suitcase. Trust me.

The first day of shooting was at the most incredible old home of some Danish royals. It was extravagant and ostentatious but was so old that up on the rooftop it was like ancient ruins.

We took the top level and enjoyed the view of the jungle and Christo above us, and the bustling city of Rio below. The city had turned the bottom level into a cafe and art school so there was such a peaceful air of history and creativity that we all found really inspiring.

This story was a tropical take on graphic prints. Prints are going to be the bread and butter of most designers for the next few seasons to come so get on board.

We used swimsuits from favorites such as Zimmermann, Insight and One Teaspoon just to name a few and bold pieces fashion pieces from designers such as Sass and Bide and Ginger and Smart. The story looks incredible, as it’s a trend you can really have fun with as anything goes.

Another story we shot was down at Ipanema beach and we were so lucky with the weather on this day. It was truly glorious sunshine. This story was a lot less stylized than the previous but it was divine nonetheless.

We opted to show lots of skin and show how sexy a healthy and happy beach body can be. Itsy bitsy bikinis from camilla and marc, Anna and Boy, and Zimmermann were some of our favorites along with gorgeous pieces from Alice McCall, Manning Cartell and One Teaspoon.

This story differed from the first as the jewellery was much more fine and smaller in size. The subtleness of a glimmering signet ring or thin silver chain is really captured by the sunlight so it’s a great look if you feel boring in just a bikini when at the beach. The hair was out and beachy with waves and sea salt spray and the colors we were in love with were rich navy, deep purple and refreshing apricot.

Rio has so much to offer in the way of culture and color. I really look forward to you all checking out our swim stories in the Nov issue of Cleo.

Check out Cat’s blog posts for Cleo Magazine and those on her personal blog The Cat’s Meow.

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