Feature Image:
Model: Jackie Wyers
Wardrobe and styling: Fiori Couture
Hair and makeup: Jackie Wyers
Best friends and photography and styling duo Jade Soto and Marianne Bell celebrate fairy tales—and the romance and folklore of fairies—with these lush, dreamy photos that practically give off the scent of roses in full bloom. Both women grew up making fairy houses and looking for evidence of fairy life, searching for wing debris between the soft petals of roses and remnants of fairy baths in the morning dew. In their art, they focus on seeing past the ordinary world and catching little magical details, “like the glimmer of sunlight on water, or the way a material falls,” that they then nurture and grow into a fairy-tale world.
“Although neither of us are children anymore,” they say, “we strive to approach our work from a child’s perspective, seeing never what is and always what could be.”
For these images they worked with Susan Lafica of Fiori Couture and makeup artist and YouTuber Jackie Wyers to create two juxtaposing fairy-tale worlds: a dark, enchanted realm full of pastries and roses in which a modern Marie Antoinette dreams—bathed in pink, roses, and sugar—and a light, songbird realm of fairies and feathered creatures. For the latter, they imagined a nature spirit bathed in florals and soft blues who wanders the world at sunrise, then fades to a transparent whisper in the wind as the morning light dwindles. Part of her soul lives within a feathered creature, a little yellow bird who rests in a gilded cage upon her bosom. When the sun rises and she disappears, her little bird remains and flits about the day, free in the sunshine and wind. At sunset, the fairy regains form and her little bird comes back to her to nestle near her heart, and her soul is reunited.
jackiewyersSee more of this duo’s work on Instagram @lostlandscollections or visit lostlandscollections.com, where you can find their upcoming booking locations and information to create a fairy tale of your own. See more of Jackie Wyer’s work on Instagram @jackiewyers, and find Fiori Couture @fioricouture.
The Nightingale and the Rose
A FAIRY TALE BY OSCAR WILDE—AN EXCERPT
“Here at last is a true lover,” said the Nightingale. “Night after night have I sung of him, though I knew him not: night after night have I told his story to the stars, and now I see him. His hair is dark as the hyacinth-blossom, and his lips are red as the rose of his desire; but passion has made his face like pale ivory, and sorrow has set her seal upon his brow.”
“The Prince gives a ball to-morrow night,” murmured the young Student, “and my love will be of the company. If I bring her a red rose she will dance with me till dawn. If I bring her a red rose, I shall hold her in my arms, and she will lean her head upon my shoulder, and her hand will be clasped in mine. But there is no red rose in my garden, so I shall sit lonely, and she will pass me by. She will have no heed of me, and my heart will break.”
