January 13, 2009

january catalog

Our January catalog drops today! The trend concept this month is called Farmer's Daughter. Here's some info from Elsa on our catalog team:

"We shot the catalog in Epping, North Dakota. We found the location in a National Geographic article about abandoned towns of North Dakota. Basically, in the early 20th century, with railroad expansion, people moved to the prairies of North Dakota to homestead and hoping to make a life farming. Unfortunately the weather proved to be too harsh for them or their crops and eventually the people had to abondon their houses as well as most of their belongings.

These houses and barns remain standing to this day, and if they are owned by anyone, you wouldn’t know it as they seem to have been long forgotten. We worked with a woman in Epping whose family had come out to North Dakota by way of Ohio, and she took us to the homestead they made, a small cabin on acres and acres of land. We were also able to explore lots of other abandoned houses, barns, schools, and even a church. Each building contained remnants of lives left behind, things such as books, clothes, papers, letters, and furniture.

It was an unbelievable experience getting to see this, but we decided that shooting outside in the vast fields was much better for our trend. The land in North Dakota is beautiful and vast, and it felt emptier than any other place I have ever been."

Here are a few of the National Geographic photos, but check out the rest at the link. They are eerily beautiful...

• Posted by fp girl on January 13, 2009 9:57 AM
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