Hi FashionPhotograhyBlog.com readers. Do we have a treat for you! Today, we have a special guest at FPBlog, Vince Gonzales, LA based fashion photographer from VinPix and Pro Photo Coalition shares his interview with popular California based fashion designer, Trina Turk and her partner, photographer and fashion celebrity, Jonathan Skow. Vince met with the dynamic fashion duo at their beautiful Palm Springs home and spoke to them about their journey and processes with their retail label, “Trina Turk”.
Vince Gonzales: Trina, I have to tell you that, on this interview coming up, I don’t think I’ve had so many friends say that they wanted to help. I mean you are like a rock star! It’s like anytime I bring up Trina Turk they’re like “Oh my God, I love Trina Turk”… Your fans are very passionate and it’s really fun to see. So, you have women’s apparel, men’s apparel, textiles for the home, retail?
Trina Turk: Yes we do, and we originally started as a wholesale company so we started as a women’s contemporary collection, started wholesale and our first store was actually in Palm Springs, we opened in Palm Springs in 2002. People really associate the brand with Palm Springs although we are really more a Californian brand but since we expanded our store 2 years ago we have now space for “Mr Turk” which Jonathan is designing and you’ve got Trina Turk Residential in its own little area and I think that when people come to Palm Springs our store is often on the to do list and it’s just become a thing you do when you are in Palm Springs.
Vince Gonzales: You guys collaborate on how that brand looks when you shoot and when you design, I imagine…
Trina Turk: Well, Jonathan knows what’s going on in the design process as we are developing the collections. As far as the actual photo shoots for the look books go, it’s really Jonathan. He’s doing the casting, choosing the location etc…
Jonathan Skow: Well we really talk back and forth even when the first inspiration for the line starts to happen we start talking about “Oh well if the inspiration is ‘dessert road trip’ wouldn’t it be cool to shoot it at that house where we were, that we just saw”. There are some times where the actual photo shoot is, was where we started thinking about, pretty early on about the design process.
Trina Turk: A lot of the house tours out in Palm Springs and in Los Angeles have resulted in us finding locations that haven’t been shot that much and, so it’s the architecture comes into it as well.
Vince Gonzales: That’s great! I read somewhere that you guys are always working, not in a bad way but you do these tours and you travel. You are always banking concepts and ideas and things like that…
Trina Turk: I mean it’s hard not to. Our company is 18 years old and I think that it becomes part of what we’re doing. You can’t really stop thinking about it and it’s not like there’s a clear definition between what work is and what is not work – it all goes in there.
Jonathan Skow: I think after all these years, we are actually still excited about putting a line together and say “oh, wouldn’t it be cool to do this”. It is still fun to see architecture or when you see designs, colors, prints or whatever it is. When we are travelling it’s not “oh we can’t get away from it”. We embrace it and it’s pretty much what our life is about.
Big thanks to Vince Gonzales for sharing this interview with FPBlog! Stay tuned to FashionPhotographyBlog.com for part 2 of his interview with Trina Turk and Jonathan Skow. To read more about the work of this dynamic couple you can visit Vince’s article with the couple on Pro Photo Coalition, or follow Trina Turk @ShopTrinaTurk or Jonathan Skow @MrTurk. Also, you find Vince Gonzales @vinpix.
IMAGE SOURCE
Images courtesy of VinPix & Pro Photo Coalition