Dannii Minogue: Behind-the-scenes On 'My Style'

Posted: 07/10/11

Dannii Minogue

Follow: Behind The Scenes, Dannii Minogue, Fashion, My Style

To celebrate my new book, My Style, hitting bookstores this month I thought it would be fun to show you some pictures from behind-the-scenes of the making of the book.

It takes a number of people and a huge amount of work to get a book ready for publishing. It was fabulous to be reunited with photographer Jonty Davies, who shot me for Marie Claire.

We had an incredibly tight schedule, taking all the book's 'hero' shots – the cover and the chapter opening images – over a two-day photo shoot. It was an intense couple of days but we had a lot of laughs along the way.

Team My Style descended on The Soho Hotel in London, taking over a couple of their fabulous suites so that we had lots of options for background settings. I worked with My UK style consultant Angie Smith to source a roomful of gorgeous gowns and the accessories for the shoot covered every surface in one of the bathrooms.

By now you might have seen the finished product, but here are some of the stories behind the photos...

Behind-the-scenes on My Style

My UK hair and makeup stylist Christian Vemaak and I set up camp in one of the bedrooms in The Soho Hotel. His make up and products took up the entire dressing table and an awful lot of the floor space too. We literally relocated the office to the hotel on shoot days - that’s Nathan from the Profile Talent management team in the background catching up on some emails.
I’ve been a massive fan of Jonty Davies since he shot me for Marie Claire. Here’s a ‘Jonty-eye-view’ of the bathroom shot. I felt a little bit like Joan Collins in my terry-toweling turban!
Sharing a celebratory cranberry juice with my literary agent Pat Lomax. I’ve been working with her since My Story and I think she might just be as proud of My Style as I am.
Some of the crew take a well-deserved lunch break. That’s Jonty the photographer on the left, Nikki the book designer in the middle and Ami from my publishers Simon & Schuster on the right.
It took book editor Jane De Teliga a couple of hours to style this wardrobe – there were so many beautiful pieces we wanted to get into the shot. I could have hung out gazing at all the pretty things for ages but Jonty the photographer got the shot in about five minutes flat!
I had this mannequin made to my exact specifications when I was working on a dress with Ralph and Russo a couple of years ago. Usually she lives at the Project D headquarters but she was allowed out for this very special occasion and oh, the fabulous dresses she got to wear over the two days of the shoot...
The beds at the hotel were so big and bouncy and soft, Christian and I couldn’t resist trying one out for size.
I can’t remember exactly the song that was playing when this photo was taken but it certainly seems to have hit the spot. My manager Nathan is always in charge of ‘choons’ on location and he never fails to come up with a play list that strikes the right chord.
Team My Style reviewing some of the day’s shots. It’s great to have a look regularly to see what’s working and what’s not.
Sitting on the balcony of our fabulous suite at The Soho Hotel enjoying the view while we waited for the light to be just perfect for this shot. It looks so summery and idyllic but this picture was taken at about 5.30 at night and I can tell you it was chilly up there.
The hive of activity that goes into creating each and every fashion shot. Stylist, hair and makeup, lighting, videographer, photographer, book editor… It takes a lot of people to create the illusion of effortless style!
Christian took this photo and I love it. The shoe I’m holding in the picture was definitely my shoe-of-the-day.
This shot was taken in the late afternoon and, along with the setting sun we had a little help from the lighting crew to create the incredibly warm feeling this image conveys.
Christian touches up my make up before we shoot the very last picture for the book. The sun is setting in London after two style packed days.
And that’s a wrap!
We sourced rails and rails of fabulous pieces for the photo shoot and it was almost a full time job for Angie’s assistants Charlotte and Georgia to steam the creases out of them. Just a fraction of the outfits we called in actually went on to feature on the pages of My Style but we had a lot of fun admiring them before we had to send them back to the PR companies.