I am waiting for yarn.
Summer tops are coming. I have the designs in my head, and when the yarn arrives I will make them, and then I will have to photograph them. On my body. The body I made them for, because I made them for me, not for a size chart.
That thought makes me cringe. And I have been sitting with that reaction long enough to want to write about it.
The first book
When I wrote Hekel en word Heel 1, my co-author wanted to use a friend of hers as the model. I agreed. At that point it was a reasonable call: the book was mostly shawls, ponchos, decorative pieces. Nothing that needed to fit a specific body. A shawl drapes the same way on most people, so the photo works regardless.
The second book was different.
For Hekel en word Heel 2 we used what I call Measure and Make patterns. Not a fixed size chart. Not S, M, L, XL, and an assumption that your body lands neatly inside one of those boxes. A method: you take your measurements, and you make something that fits the actual person you are making it for. It is, in my opinion, the more honest way to write a pattern, because bodies are not standard. Mine is a good example. My bust measurement does not match my proportions anywhere else. Standard sizing does not know what to do with me.
So when the time came for photographs, I pushed back.
I did not want a model. I wanted the testers who had actually made the garments, on their actual bodies. Real people. People whose proportions are specific and individual and do not fit into a size chart either.
My co-author was not happy about it.
I stood my ground, and most of the garments in that book were photographed on the women who tested the patterns. It remains one of the decisions I am proudest of.
The photograph problem
Photography has been my weakness since I started designing. I know this.
I can crochet. I can knit. I can design. I can write a pattern. Getting a photograph that actually shows the thing, that makes someone want to make it, that is another skill entirely and not one that comes naturally to me.
Pierre from Pierre Photography Passion has photographed my work when I have been close enough to reach him, and those photos are everything mine are not: considered, well-lit, composed. Worth every cent.
But Pierre is not always nearby, and the caravan does not travel with a photography studio. So I take photos myself, and I know they are not what they could be, and I post them anyway, and sometimes people buy the pattern regardless. Sometimes they don’t.
That is the reality most designers are working in. Not a professional setup. Not a separate model. Just the designer, their phone, and whatever light is available outside the caravan on a given morning.
The question I have not been able to shake
If I design a summer top for my body, sized and shaped for my specific measurements, and I wear it and it fits and it does what it is supposed to do, why is photographing myself in it something to cringe about?
I know the answer. The industry trained all of us to see pattern photographs a certain way. Tall. Straight-size. Model-posed. The garment as product, the person in it as a hanger.
But the garment is not a product to hang. It is something someone made with their hands, for their body, to wear in their actual life. The person who made it is the most legitimate person to show it being worn. They know every stitch. They made the decisions. They can tell you exactly how it behaves because they spent hours with it.
Why are we embarrassed about that?
What I would like to see normalise
Designers wearing their own work. Not as an apology, not with a disclaimer about not being a model, just: here is what I made, here is how it fits me, here it is in the light outside my house or my caravan or wherever I live.
Real bodies in pattern photographs. Not every pattern photo, not as a political statement, just as a normal thing. Because it is normal. Most people who knit and crochet are not making garments for a size 32 model. They are making them for themselves or for someone they love, and those bodies look like mine, and probably like yours.
I have not taken those summer top photos yet. The yarn has not arrived.
But I have decided that when it does, and when I make the tops, I will photograph them on myself without the cringe. Or with the cringe, and I will post them anyway.
The person who made it should wear it. It should be enough.
If you have thoughts on this, I would genuinely like to hear them. Drop them in the comments. And if you are a designer who photographs yourself in your own work, tell me: did the cringe go away, or do you just do it anyway?
