Journal
Earlier this week, Olivia Colman walked the Miu Miu show in Paris. She is fifty-two and her grey hair was pulled into a low ponytail, her hands stayed in the pockets of her leather skirt the whole way down. Her confidence, effervescence, maturity and character shined through showing the collection as something timeless rather than trendy. Miuccia Prada chose Colman to represent the collection in a way that's particularly authentic to a person with taste and discernment.
That is what good casting looks like from the outside: obvious, after the fact. From the inside it is slower and more instinctive, and it is never done in isolation. A face is chosen alongside the location, the light, the clothes and the photographer, and change any one of them and the others shift. We think of a shoot as closer to an orchestra than a portrait. Casting is one of the instruments, and if it is out of tune with the rest, the whole thing sounds wrong.
Fame isn't the point
Brands still come to us asking for a name. Sometimes that's the right call. More often, the better question is who actually belongs to the story, and the answer is rarely whoever has the most followers this month.
When Phoebe Philo cast Joan Didion for Céline in 2015, she was eighty, photographed by Juergen Teller in dark glasses. It worked because Didion already stood for what Philo's Céline was about: intelligence, and a complete lack of interest in performing for anyone. Saint Laurent did something similar with Joni Mitchell the same year. Neither booking was about reach.
When the face is wrong, a campaign rarely fails loudly. It just slides past. The clothes are good, the light is lovely, and a week later nobody can remember a single frame of it. The right person gives an image something to hold on to. Without them, there's nothing for the eye or the memory to catch.
Both sides of the camera
Le Regard co-founders have a particular set of experience. Irina Lazareanu spent years as one of the defining models of her generation, walking for the major houses around the world. She knows what it is to be cast, and within a few minutes of meeting someone she can usually tell how the camera is going react.
Caroline Nitsch started from the other direction. For twenty years she has worked in art direction and casting for brands including Net-a-Porter, Harrods, Mejuri and Canada Goose, which taught her what a face has to carry for a brand over several seasons, long after the shoot has wrapped. Irina looks at a person and sees what they could give. They both look at the brief and see what it needs. Most of our casting happens in the conversation between them both.
We never set out to offer casting on its own. We did it on every shoot because we had a unique point of view and the experience to back it up, and eventually clients started asking for it by name.
Old faces, new faces
We've cast the likes of Helena Christensen, Pamela Anderson, Jessica Stam, Erin Wasson, Tasha Tilberg to name a few. Someone who has been photographed for decades brings a control you can't teach. Someone just starting out brings the thing you only get once, which is the jolt of a face you haven't seen before. Tasha and Jessica both started out in Canada. We think about that whenever someone assumes the right face has to be flown in.
Over the years we've come to know agency directors, talent and brand owners across Europe, Asia, North America and beyond, and the ones worth knowing will tell you straight who's ready and who isn't. That kind of honesty doesn't come from a database. It comes from years of showing up for each other.
Start with a look
Nobody remembers a picture for just one thing. They remember the light, the room, the clothes and the person, and the way it all landed at once. Casting is one of the ways we get there, and we give it the same care as everything else in the frame.
Just as much, we care about how it feels to be part of it. Irina has spent enough years in front of the camera to know what a model needs to feel comfortable and at ease, and how easily that gets overlooked. Caroline has spent enough years on the brand side to know what a client needs to feel properly looked after. Between the two, both sides of a shoot are taken care of, which is rarer than it should be.