Sixteen looks, sixteen places, four days of light

A lookbook is prepared like a journey: you leave with a list and come back with something else. This season the list was sixteen complete outfits, four models — Yasmine, Nesrine, Dounia and Rayan, all fictional characters — and a city we think we know by heart. What we brought back was a way of looking at Algiers at hours when nobody looks at it.

A plan of light, not a plan of places

We did not choose the places first. We chose the light: the blue morning on the seafront, the hard two o’clock sun in the lanes of the Casbah, the gold of six in the evening on white façades, the blue hour outside the Grande Poste. Each outfit went to the light that served it. The pale linen of the shirt dress went to the morning, where it turns almost transparent without being so: Kettani shirt dress. The white shirt went to the midday sun, which draws every fold: Arcades shirt.

The garnet karakou waited for the evening, in an enclosed courtyard where light falls from above and makes the fetla shine without flattening it: Cropped velvet karakou, fetla embroidery. Rayan’s tropical wool suit went to the blue hour, when sky and cloth are the same colour: Tropical wool suit jacket.

The sports bag

The whole crew fitted in two cars. The most precious kit was not the camera: it was a sports bag holding a steamer, an extension lead, pins, double-sided tape, spare insoles and a white sheet for changing in a stairwell. Linen creased in a car boot does not recover on its own.

The rule: what we photograph, we sell

No piece in the lookbook was retouched to look more fitted than it is. The sizes worn are printed on every product page, with the model’s height and measurements. When a dress falls differently on Dounia and on Yasmine we say so, and the size advisor uses it. The hotspots on every lookbook photograph lead to the exact piece, in the exact colour.

That is what decided Nesrine’s long puff-sleeved dress, photographed walking so you can see how the matt satin moves: Puff-sleeve maxi dress. And Dounia’s blouza dress, shot from the back as much as the front, because the back is half the dress: Crepe and lace blouza dress.

What we did not keep

Out of nearly two thousand frames, sixteen became spreads. We set aside the most spectacular when they hid the garment, and kept the simplest when they showed it. A lookbook is not a holiday album: it is a catalogue that is allowed to be beautiful.