Last summer, I decided that it was time to check out my second home, Shanghai. I spent six long years in this Chinese city and after returning home for five years, I grew curious to see how much it has changed.

Of course, naturally, I was also dying to see some of my good friends that still live there. Slovakia and China are extremely dear to my heart. Obviously, since I live and breathe fashion, I got an idea to connect these two worlds through a fashion story. I picked out the best pieces from top Slovak designers and hopped on a plane directly to Pudong Airport.

As it always happens, these carefully planned projects never run smoothly. The photographer that was supposed to fly out with me, had to cancel his trip due to personal reasons. Luckily, my old modeling agency had recommended me a great talent based in China, an Argentinian photographer Leonardo Diaz. He loved the work of Slovak designers and was thrilled to do this project with me. Shanghai was experiencing the hottest summer in the last 50 years and the location scouting was a real struggle. Driving through the streets on Leo’s bike was like a running through a hot sauna. The sweat was never ending, running down our backs. It took me a week to put the whole shoot together and the night before I still didn’t have a makeup artist…  By chance, I did find one thanks to the ultimate social network app, Wechat.

We started the day of the shoot at sunrise, 430 am. I prepared all the styling and waited for our savior, the air-conditioned minivan, to arrive. We had to start extremely early due to the heat and also due to the blazing strong sunlight. The location we chose was the 18th century Yu Garden (Garden of Happiness) and the streets around this Shanghai iconic landmark. I swear, we must have drunk a thousand liters of water and I prayed that the model would make it through the shoot in one piece. Some outfits were difficult to manage; some were literally impossible to put on, so naturally we had to improvise. The makeup ran down the model’s face the second Echo, the makeup artist, had fixed it. When we felt like the heat was unbearable, we hid in the van for a while to cool off and rest up before the next heat wave slapped us. The struggle was real, but we did it! I am extremely happy with the result and also with the fact that you can find the whole story in the top Slovak fashion magazine, EVA <3

DESIGNERS & BRANDS 

Marcel Holubec W
Novesta
Andrea Vonkomerová
Veronika Lokajíčková
Ferity
Dona Rosi
Boris Hanečka
Fero Mikločko / Magenta 1
Rozbora Couture

Photo – LEONARDO DIAZ
Styling & Production – JANA TOMAS
Hair & Makeup – ECHO 
Model – CECELIA / Liquid Models Shanghai

Backstage photo – JANA TOMAS