Justine Board on how the Lady Golfer team put together our first ever fashion shoot
Don’t get me wrong, I like snow. Sometimes I love it. I heart white Christmases, fresh powder on an Alpine ski slope, the satisfying underfoot creak when you tramp though the stuff. I just don’t like it when it is officially Spring and I am trying to organise a Spring/Summer golf fashion shoot. Outside. AND IT IS SNOWING.
It’s not just the unhappy combination of thin cotton singlet and biting wind – this is the UK, that happens in August.
It is the huge, can’t-ignore-them, settling-on-your- eyelashes snowflakes, covering the greens, drifting in the air, photo-bombing our pictures and scuppering our best-laid plans.
I should explain. Here at Lady Golfer we decided it was high time we showcased women’s golf wear in the environment it is designed for – out on the course on actual Lady Golfers, so that you, the reader, can see how the clothes will realistically look, move and perform.
We recruited the services of some magnificent Yorkshire ladies, members at Rudding Park and Ripon, and after being blighted by the white stuff at our original shoot location, Rudding Park, still blanketed in snow and freezing temperatures five days after the initial snowfall, we re-directed models, photographer, hair and make-up, clothes, props and equipment to the snow-free Aldwark Manor.
There is a patron saint of golf – St Andrew predictably – but he must have been otherwise engaged that morning because right on cue, the moment we had all assembled, the heavens opened and down it came like God’s dandruff.
And so here we are, our inaugural Spring/Summer fashion shoot. In the snow.
But then we started thinking… surely this is what golf is about? Taking on the elements, out in all weathers, battling both yourself and whatever nature can throw at you. Just look at Scott and Cabrera duking it out at Augusta under heavy April showers.
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And with golf clubs struggling after a long, harsh winter, with spectator numbers dwindling at domestic competitions to the extent that the European Tour now includes events in Dubai, maybe we need a rallying cry to encourage everyone to support British golf this summer, whether by playing at your local club or turning out at domestic events and cheering on our players at all levels.
Maybe we need to follow the example of the Yorkshire ladies in our shoot, and get out there and get stuck in, whatever the weather.
