The New Kit-Cat Club photo shoot

So Mike & Gloria of In the Long Run Designs have been doing this really cool project called the new Kit-Cat Portraits. When they were at the National Portrait Gallery in London, they saw a room of portraits of men (of course) who were members of the Kit-Cat Club, which was an 18th literary/dining club. The portraits have an interesting aspect ratio, longer than a typical head/shoulders portrait, but shorter than half-length. And all the poses are different, and some of the poses worked in an object relevant to that man’s work.

Their project used that same portrait size, with varied portraits, and a similar brownish background. BUT their portraits (besides being photography not painting), featured women (yay!) and they decided to use the late 18th century rather than the early. (Our costuming group has a lot of costumes of that era, less so early 18th century.)

You can read more in their own words on their blog (and see a pic of the original portraits): https://inthelongrun.wordpress.com/2019/03/09/the-new-kit-cat-portraits-series-1/

Mike & Gloria have experimented with setting a temp studio up in their house and it works really well, especially for a short person like me!

They booked people for a specific time period, that allowed for getting ready, shooting some pics for fun, and then working on the Kit-Cat pic. They were super organized and it was fun seeing them experiment with different lighting set-ups. And it gave me some practice posing, since it’s something I still struggle with! Though sessions like this are helping me get more comfortable.

Here’s what the set-up looked like:







Selfie!



So, what was I wearing? I made a version of the famous KCI dress a number of years ago and it remains one of my favs. I used a sale red/white striped dupioni (not period accurate, but whatever, it’s silk and low slub). I wore antique earrings and a necklace and fan made by Gloria! The matching bracelets I think were from the Downton Abbey collection.



The Earrings:



Here is the Kit-Cat club image - and then I’ll finish with the other images they took.















(This is the original dress from the KCI collection:)