Established in 1978, Nine West debuted its revolutionary collection of runway trends focused on personal expression and instant gratification, igniting the street style movement and changing fashion forever. Inspired by the first selfie, taken on a Polaroid at Studio 54 by the artist Maripol at a time of rebellion and creativity, the campaign nods to the past while evoking a timeless quality, with a mix of styling influences spanning the decades.
Nine West Ecom Pre-Holiday Editorial
What are the souvenirs that one my collect from one holiday party to the next? Vignettes captured of one night of cocktails, karaoke, photo booth sessions, and late night snacks. A short video of a purse that seems to hold every holiday tchotchke imaginable.
Senior Art Director, Amazon MyHabit
CHALLENGE: MyHabit, the flash-sale site for Amazon, was originally launched with intentions of being high-end designer. However, the overall aesthetic was too esoteric, cold and moody, alienating customers. Most images were shot in studio from a severe angle in a very theatrical manner where the models looked intimidating.
SOLUTION: Create a campaign to show a more lifestyle approach making it more relatable to our customer. The idea of X is MyHabit was open-ended enough to be able to cover all departments of women, men, home and kids.
Result: These images were also used to pitch more Designers to showcase with us such as Rick Owens.
Senior Art Director, Amazon MyHabit
Challenge: With a flash sale site, merchandise is usually past season, overstock, and sometimes bought ahead of season. How do you tell a relevant trends story with randomly assorted merchandise, that is usually planned and shot within a few days?
Solution: Our marketing department presented trends several months ahead. The merchants bought into the trends that would be relevant to their customer. The creative team set deadlines for all teams so that we would have more time to plan a successful shoot. A proper style out occured with the merchants, marketing, and creative teams all in alignment. Previously, the seasonal trends stories were shot in studio. We were able to plan ahead enough to be able to shoot on location in the streets of New York and eventually were able to plan ahead of time to plan a shoot in Miami for the same cost per shot.
My role: Leading cross-functional collaboration among marketing, creative, and merchants to plan early enough and be nimble with inventory delivery challenges.
MyHabit Fall Trends campaign based on the idea of New York stories.
MyHabit Spring Trends campaign shot in Miami with the same cost per shot as New York.
Senior Art Director, Amazon MyHabit
Challenge: How do you make a flash sale site selling excess merchandise more relevant to a customer aware of trends and designers? Our marketing team and merchants pitched to several designers to receive goods that would be donated to the CFDA fund. This gave MyHabit an opportunity to build fashion credibility within the industry.
Solution: Built a custom page, highlighting key designers such as Philip Lim, ALC, Tory Burch, Jcrew, and Public School and tell relevant trends stories with the merchandise.
In-House, Ann Taylor.
Challenge: How do you make a recurring collection of silk dupioni and silk taffeta wedding dresses relevant and interesting? Every season there is a core collection of standard silk bridesmaid dresses made in seasonal colors and there are a few trendier bridal and dress rehearsal pieces. How do you tell the story within a very small budget?
Solution: Building the right on-set team of photographer, hair, and makeup. Working closely with our in-house stylist to come up with interesting head pieces to elevate the standard bridesmaids dresses. Most importantly, have fun.
In-house, Creative Director.
Photographer: Terry Tsiolis
Challenge: Liz Claiborne wanted to refresh their look with a new campaign that represented a more fashion forward woman.
Solution: Liz Claiborne is known as a brand for highly evolved strong women. The campaign idea was based on women bonding in their ability to connect with each other and how those connections can create powerful change. Terry Tsiolis shot the campaign and Jessica Diehl, now fashion director of Vanity Fair, was the stylist.
Agency, Wieden and Kennedy.
New York magazine asked for submissions from different agencies to submit their thoughts on what a Best of New York cover should be.
I thought about quintessential NY icons and how they might translate typographically. The process of boiling dough, making letters, and baking them was a satisfying experiment in artisanal craft. But the best part was devouring them.
Agency: Wieden and Kennedy
Creative Director, Todd Waterbury. Art Director, Ting Ting Lee
Challenge: It was the year of the 80th anniversary of when Cole Haan introduced the penny loafer and they wanted to celebrate it in a big way.
Action: Drove strategic, integrated campaign for the 80th anniversary launch including print, outdoor, in-store, catalog and digital. Developed visionary campaign re-imagining the penny and classic penny loafer as a
modern symbol of charm and luck. Presented comprehensive vision to the CEO.
This is a magazine where I had the opportunity to work with an amazing creative director named Markus Kiersztan in London for a fashion magazine published by Emap.
In-house, Amazon MyHabit. Senior Art Director.
With the volume of images that we produced at MyHabit there were great opportunities for experimentation in concept, pose, or angle. The lifespan of an image on the site was 3 days so nothing could be too precious and it gave our art directors some runway to experiment with the wide variety of projects.
Agency: AR New York
Creative Director, Alex Gonzalez. Art Director, Ting Ting Lee.
Developed logo and prototype for Flair magazine, of Mondadori Publications, and conceptualized photo shoots. Art directed and designed first 6 issues. Became one of the top-selling fashion publications in Italy after Italian Vogue.
Challenge: When I first started at Ann Taylor, they needed help with updating their site so it would be more on par with their print work.
Solution: I re-evaluated all the talent in place, the process, lighting, retouching and pulled together a strong team to execute the photography. In some cases we would use photography from the print team. One particular project was exciting because we wanted to show the inspiration for the Spring collection which included Citrine and botanical prints. We made a mood board where the user could rollover to read further context on the inspiration as well as shop from these ideas.
In-house, Senior Art Director.
Challenge: Once the new collection was launched, how do you show your customer how to wear it? Once a month, we wanted to showcase the top 20 looks that would show the customer how to put the pieces together, whether it was to update your wardrobe, a wear to work look , or a night out.
Solution: I built a strong studio team to execute these shots as well as worked closely with merchants and marketing teams to make sure we were aligned on the looks to message. The images were used for the Looks we love section of the site as well as emails.
Result: The top 20 looks were one of the highest click thru areas of our site and year over year there was a 30% growth for ecommerce sales.
Album cover art for Playdate band, with members of Bryan Bullet, Andrew Bradfield, and Tatiana Von Furstenberg.
In-house, Art Director.
Photographer: Daymion Mardel
Challenge: Spring campaign to showcase the Calypso. St. Barth jet set bohemian lifestyle.
Solution: We shot this locally at a hotel which included a poolside and a beautiful skyline with a fantastic team of the models, Helouise and Giedre, and the photographer Daymion Mardel. The team was very resourceful in the fact that we could also pull props from the Calypso St. Barth home collection.
Agency: AR New York
Creative Director: Raul Martinez
Photographer: Martien Mulder
Art Director: Ting Ting Lee
Developed a campaign and rebranding strategy based on the idea of modern connected souls; people connected not only to each other but the culture around them.
Agency: AR New York
Creative Director, Alex Gonzalez. Art Director, Ting Ting Lee.
Photographer: Craig Mcdean, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin
Cesare Paciotti is a very sexy Italian brand so we had fun with highlighting the over the top nature of the shoes whether it was laying on a gold lame pillow or in a tight confined space. I concepted the campaigns as well as attended the shoots.
Agency: AR New York
Photographer: Mario Sorrenti
Creative Director: Raul Martinez
Art Directors: Ting Ting Lee , Garland Lyn
Relaunch of Obession Night parfum.
My time at AR was a precious time of development and excitement under the guidance of Raul Martinez and his gracious introductions to the top talent in the industry. I am grateful for the learnings and will never forget my time there.
Agency: AR New York
Creative Director: Raul Martinez
Photographer: Steven Meisel
Art Director: Ting Ting Lee
I was fortunate enough to be able to work under the guidance of Raul Martinez and exposed to an amazing group of talented people along the way. These would be frequently closed set where the magic could happen.