Hello welcome to our OBG family !!
My name is Laura, the daughter of John and Lade Barker we are the family behind Our Back Garden and the keepers of our beautiful Mill Meadows Farm.
Over the last couple of years it has become my little project to turn our beautiful Alpaca fleeces into product. With a back ground in fashion buying and the worlds best boyfriend we have worked hard to provide customers with essential knitted pieces that are made from the super soft wool of our very own Alpaca herd.
We launched last December with a range of knitted hats and this year we have added to this by creating some colour block and plain knitted scarves to match back with our already popular Hat offering.
For me it has been so important to be able to bring the styling of these pieces to life and with a little help from some friends and family I want to tell you about a morning spent capturing some of this content.
The Photographer – I had been struggling initially to find someone who could do this. I started reaching out to lots of people over Facebook and Instagram which is pretty effective, but I wasn’t really getting the responses I would like. I thought about reaching out to university students who wanted a challenge for their portfolio and after looking around I stumbled across a connection that was perfect.
I know Beth Crook through some mutual friends, she studied fashion promotion and communication at Southampton university I knew instantly that I had found the right woman for the job. We started to throw ideas back and forth and before we knew it we had a shoot date and vision all in motion.
https://bethcrook.wixsite.com/portfolio
The Model – Part of my journey in creating OBG has been about my identity in what we are creating. We are new farmers and we have only had the farm since 2010. My family is diverse: my mum coming from Africa and my Dad a local from this area. As a mixed family I thought it was important to portray that image in the model I chose. Oliva Overton my incredibly gorgeous cousin who encapsulates everything I stand for. With her stunning looks and beautiful natural hair I knew that she would make the perfect muse for our vision. Did I mention she is also a designer herself? Modelling is only her part time profession.
Accompanied by her model mother who is my super fabulous Aunty Wumi the day was perfect and as you can see we were able to capture some amazing content.
The Outfits
I spent weeks pinning ideas on boards and looking at key pieces I wanted to shoot with my product when it dawned on me to look closer to home. I work full time with Fatface where I am part of the buying team on womenswear. With the full blessing of my Fatface family I was able to gain access to some of my favourite pieces from the AW19 womenswear collection to bring this shoot to life.
From beautiful midi dresses to gorgeous shapes in cord I had so much to play with. My favourite pieces were using some of the “Anything Basic Range “to layer underneath some of our outfits, sustainably sources and super soft, some of the stripe pieces were really key to nailing winter styling.
Check out the website to see more of this amazing brand who has a huge piece of my heart.
I really wanted to capture styling that would show how to wear our OBG products and provide some inspiration on how to wrap up for the colder months. Whether your from the country side or living in the city we hope there is something captured that connects with all our customers.
The Location
Mill Meadows Farm!! There was only one location ever in my mind for our first shoot. My Family’s farm is the perfect haven for all things natural. One of the key elements we also utilised was our gorgeous wooden house that we have just built and moved into. The grey exterior provided the perfect back drop for our more simplistic images and product focused shots. Whereas our fields filled with Alpaca, Sheep and Cows were the perfect setting for connecting our product to our back garden.
That’s a wrap
I cant wait to share all the images with you all over the next few months, there is so much to edit through but I couldn’t be more excited about what the future holds for all of us. I hope our customers love our products as much as we do. We believe whole heartedly in our products and feel passionately about everything we are trying to create here in our back garden.
To shop these products now head over to our shop page for more information and orders.
With Love
Laura xxx
